Peripeteia
by Aurora West
Summary: Sugar Rush gets upgraded and Taffyta loses everything. Sequel to 'Terminal' and 'Fallout.' Post RBTI.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: _Wreck-It Ralph_ and _Ralph Breaks the Internet _are the property of the Walt Disney Company. All other copyrighted characters are the property of their respective creators.

Author's note: This is the third in my series of 4 _Wreck-It Ralph_ fics, the first two being 'Terminal' and 'Fallout.' I recommend reading those prior to reading this. :) I appreciate any and all feedback, and thank you for reading!

* * *

_peripeteia: a sudden reversal of fortune or change in circumstances_

CHAPTER 1

Popcorn flew through the air and Jubileena screamed as kernels rained down on her. "You _guys! _Now it's in my _hair!_"

"Oh no, popcorn blizzard!" Gloyd yelled, flinging more popcorn into the air.

Several of the racers got a face-full of food and the kernels that landed on Candlehead's hat started smoldering, making the air smell like charred butter. "Five alarm fire!" Minty laughed. "All units respond!"

Swizzle sloshed his mug of root beer at Candlehead's face, dousing her candle and making her splutter and choke. "Hey!" she whined. "How am I supposed to re-light it now?"

With a grin, Swizz said, "Ask Bowser, he'd probably do it for you."

"Yeah right, he'll burn me to to a crisp!" she said, stamping her foot. Swizzle just shrugged and moved to toss more root beer at her, but she shrieked and ducked out of the way.

Popcorn flew again and the racers laughed and scattered. Taffyta darted out of the way, giggling, and bumped into Rancis, who yelped and pushed her playfully. "Watch it," he said, grinning at her.

Sticking out her tongue, Taffyta said, "_You _watch it."

Rancis stuck his thumbs in his ears and waggled his fingers, and Taffyta scooped some popcorn up to hurl it at him, laughing at the look on his face.

Closing time at Litwak's Arcade meant thirteen glorious hours of free time. Thirteen glorious hours of getting to do whatever you wanted without having to think about quarter alerts. Not that quarter alerts were a _bad _thing; after all, they had the best job in the arcade, but even if you had the best job in the world, you needed a break. After the Random Roster Race was held, all fifteen of _Sugar Rush's _racers had the rest of the night to do anything or nothing at all. As far as time commitments went, the race wasn't much of one. Five minutes tops around the Royal Raceway, at least that was Taffyta's personal best. If she was practicing, she could do it faster, but those were ideal conditions. Racing against fourteen other people, all of whom were trying to take you out to place higher than you, was a completely different story.

But none of it was personal. Off the track, they were all friends. Once a month, most of them headed out to Game Central Station for a picnic. They all supplied food—root beer and popcorn from _Tapper's_, burgers from _BurgerTime_, pizza from _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles_, and of course candy from _Sugar Rush. _Taffyta couldn't really remember exactly how it had started. It might have grown out of the gatherings that Ralph had started organizing, but, on the plus side, _Sugar Rush _picnics didn't have his disgusting burnt pie. Oh well. He tried—at least, Taffyta was pretty sure he was trying—but she wasn't interested in the third degree burns that you'd definitely get if you were within a certain radius of those things when they exploded.

There was a crackle of electricity and Taffyta jumped and screamed, dropping her handful of popcorn, as Surge Protector appeared next to her. Putting a hand over her pounding heart and breathing heavily, she snapped, "What's your problem, anyway? It's _rude _to sneak up on people like that!"

Surge glared down at her, adjusted his glasses, and clicked his pen open. Making a note on his clipboard, he said, "I'm going to have to ask you all to disperse."

Taffyta glanced around at her fellow racers, most of whom were now engaged in a full-on food fight. Gloyd had pizza sauce smeared on his face like warpaint and Nougetsia was wailing as Candlehead threatened her with a bottle of chocolate syrup. Taffyta sidestepped a trickle of root beer and put her hands on her hips. "This is a public place. It's our constitutional right to gather here."

"I'm not running a democracy, Miss Muttonfudge, and you don't have any rights here except the ones I give you," Surge said without looking up at her.

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, okay, whatever."

He nodded, looking satisfied, and stood there waiting. After a second, Rancis joined her, looking up at Surge with mild interest. "What's he doing here?" Rancis asked.

"Oh," Taffyta said with a smirk. "He says we can't be out here. I was just planning on ignoring him."

With look of shock and an indignant huff, Surge dropped his arms to the side. His clipboard snapped against his leg and he glared down at the two of them. "This isn't a joke. I'm an authority figure and—hey!" He stopped and shot Taffyta a disgruntled look, having presumably just caught her silently opening and closing her mouth in imitation of him. "This behavior is unacceptable—you're causing a disturbance and I'm getting complaints, and—" A half-eaten hunk of pizza crust sailed through the air and connected with his head, knocking his glasses askew.

Taffyta and Rancis erupted into fits of giggles and a buzz of electricity sparked along the wire on Surge's head. As he fixed his glasses, he demanded in an aggrieved tone, "Whatever happened to all the manners you learned when you were staying with the Fix-Its? Do you have to act like such a pack of feral children _all _the _time?_"

Taffyta laughed with glee. "What do you expect? We _are _kids!"

Rancis raised his glass of root beer. "Here's to being the coolest nine-year-olds in the arcade. And definitely not needing _manners_."

Clinking her mug against his, Taffyta replied, "Yeah, who'd want to be like, a boring, lame _adult_?"

With a sidelong glance at Surge, Rancis said, "Gross, you'd have to care about things like keeping your voice down and cleaning."

She made a face, even though she actually _did _keep her house clean. Come on, just because she was a kid didn't mean she was going to live in squalor. "Eww, and going to bed at a 'reasonable time'—" The air quotes were for Surge's benefit, "—and eating vegetables."

"The _worst_," Rancis said, taking another swig of root beer. "How do you even stand it, Surge? Then again you're pretty much the most boring person _I _know. You're the most adult _adult _I've ever met."

Flipping her hair, Taffyta put a hand to her mouth and said in a mock-conspiratorial tone to Surge, "He doesn't mean that as a compliment."

"_Really_," Surge said sarcastically. He ducked a jawbreaker and scribbled something else on his clipboard, an aggravated look on his face.

Okay, so maybe they were a _little_ out of control, but what did anyone expect? Everyone needed to blow off some steam. _Sugar Rush _had just spent a couple days out of order with a sticky power-up button which had brought back all sorts of terrible memories of the previous year when they'd been unplugged, homeless, and hopeless. When Litwak had slapped that Out of Order sign down four days ago, Taffyta had huddled in her kitchen, too nauseated and scared to move, and completely convinced this was it. They were going to get unplugged for good this time. There was no _deux ex machina_ spare part waiting on the internet to save them (Ralph had called Vanellope to check). King Candy had found her there, knees drawn up to her chest, and sat down next to her. He'd leaned against the cabinet and just patted her on the knee without saying a word.

Luckily, whatever had been wrong with the button had only taken some WD-40 to fix. Still, it had freaked all of them out—Candlehead had spent the entire time in Game Central Station because she'd been so afraid the plug was going to get pulled without warning—and they were maybe a little more exuberant than they normally would be. Didn't Surge _get_ that? Rancis might have been onto something about Surge being the most boring person he knew.

Suddenly, something made Surge perk up, which probably meant bad news for them. Taffyta looked for an escape route as he waved and yelled, "Sergeant! Over here, if you have a minute!"

Taffyta followed the direction of Surge's gaze to see Calhoun walking towards them. Uh oh. Not that she wasn't always happy to see Calhoun, but this situation could go either way. Minty and Crumbelina, after all, were now covered from head to toe in pink frosting, and they were doing their best to cover most of the surrounding floor with it, too. Taffyta gave Calhoun a bright smile. "Hi, Tamora!"

Calhoun returned the smile. "Hi there, Taffyta. What are you kids up to?"

"Oh, nothing much, just having our monthly picnic. Want some pizza?"

"Felix and I already ate, but thanks, sweetie."

Good thing, because most of the pizza was now covering Jubileena. Surge was watching this exchange with a progressively more slack-jawed expression, until finally he cleared his throat and said, "Sergeant, maybe you wouldn't mind doing something about this? You have some kind of residual control over them, right?"

Shooting a glare at Surge, Taffyta said, "We weren't doing anything wrong, Tamora."

"Of course not." Patting her on the head, Calhoun said, "Surge, sometimes you have to let them spread their wings." She clapped him on the shoulder hard enough that Surge stumbled. "Lighten up."

"Can they spread their wings somewhere _besides _in front of _Paperboy?_" he demanded, glaring at Taffyta. She stuck her tongue out at him.

When Calhoun glanced around at their picnic—okay, food fight—she looked down at Taffyta and said, "You'll help Surge clean this up, right?"

"Excuse me?" Surge's mouth dropped open. "_Help _me? They can clean it up themselves!"

Gloyd and Adorabeezle ran by, shooting frosting out of piping bags, and Calhoun gave Taffyta a stern look. "Taffyta."

"_Ugh_," she groaned. "Fine."

Surge muttered something that sounded vaguely like 'thank you' and stalked off, sparks fizzing off his head. Calhoun looked like she was trying not to smile as she said, "If Surge tells me you did a good job, how about you and I go Cy-bug shooting in _Hero's Duty _sometime soon?"

Clapping her hands together in delight, Taffyta said, "Yes! We haven't done that in forever! Don't worry, I'll do like, the best job ever. Thank you, Tamora!"

With another smile, Calhoun said, "No problem, kiddo. Don't give Surge too hard a time." She looked around at the chaos and her smile faltered a little, and as she walked away, Taffyta thought she heard her mutter to herself, "Show them you trust them, but establish boundaries, show them you trust them, but _establish boundaries_…"

Once she was gone, Rancis rolled his eyes at Taffyta. "Oh, _great. _Now we have to clean up? Why do you have to be such a suck-up all the time?"

Tossing her hair, Taffyta replied, "I'm not sucking up. King Candy says I need a good female role model."

"Oh, _King Candy _says." Rancis laughed. "Big deal, you always sucked up to him too."

She just made a face at him. "Let it go. That was a million years ago."

"Seven. You're right, you stopped sucking up to him after we all found out he was actually Turbo."

This didn't even deserve a response. Putting a hand on her hip and raising her eyebrows, she said, "Are you going to help me or what?" Though he grumbled about it, he started picking up pizza boxes. Taffyta bossed the rest of the racers into listening to her and pitching in, too. Within fifteen or twenty minutes it was…well, not _clean_, but at least not as much of a disaster zone as it had been. Root beer was still dribbling between the tiles but what was she supposed to do, _mop?_

As Taffyta dumped an armful of empty popcorn containers in a garbage can, she caught a glimpse of Surge watching them like a hawk, making notes on his clipboard every now and then. It was tempting to accidentally-on-purpose spill some leftover root beer on his shoes, but…she really wanted to get in that target practice. There was something really satisfying about shooting Cy-bugs. Maybe it stemmed from the fact that her best friend had been eaten by one.

The fun had pretty much been sucked out of the picnic by that point. The racers began drifting away in pairs and trios to fill the rest of their nights. Taffyta could practically see Surge praying that whatever entertainment they chose wouldn't be in GCS. "Nice job killing the party, Taff," Rancis said.

"Hey, _I _get to go shooting with Tamora, so it was worth it."

"Yeah, I guess you have a point," he said, sounding jealous. "It's pretty cool how you guys do that. I wish she'd take _me _shooting." Taffyta smirked and managed to resist the urge to tell him it was because she was adorable and charming. The two of them started walking back towards the _Sugar Rush _outlet, Rancis holding a bucket of popcorn that he'd salvaged. As they walked, he took a handful of popcorn and stuffed it in his mouth. "Oh hey," he said, his voice muffled by the mouthful of food, "did Vanellope tell you about TobiKomi last time she was here?"

"Huh?" Taffyta asked. "What's an TobiKomi?" And why were they talking about Vanellope? Taffyta still hadn't forgiven her for getting the game unplugged and ditching all of them. Considering what a hard time Rancis had just been giving her about Calhoun and King Candy, Taffyta was tempted to return the teasing in kind, about how much he'd sucked up to Vanellope after the reset. But then they'd have to get into an even _longer _conversation about Vanellope, and Taffyta didn't feel like doing that.

With a smug expression on his face, Rancis said, "It's the company that makes _Sugar Rush_."

Giving him an exasperated look, she said, "Um, the one that Litwak said went out of business years ago? That was like, kinda the whole reason Vanellope ended up leaving the game, remember, genius?" And going Turbo, though no one ever seemed to call it what it was. Seemed kind of hypocritical to Taffyta, personally.

Rancis looked even more smug. "So that's a no, she didn't tell you? I mean, I guess I'm not that surprised, you guys weren't really on the greatest terms when she left."

What a know-it-all. "So what did Vanellope tell you about this Toby thing?" she snapped.

"Not 'Toby.' TobiKomi. They _did _go out of business, but Vanellope was telling me about how she watches for any _Sugar Rush _news on the internet." He paused to look at her, apparently under the mistaken idea that she was going to be like, super impressed by this. Big deal, Vanellope paid attention to the _news _now. Woohoo. "Anyway," Rancis said snottily, "she saw that somebody bought the company and they're back in business now."

She just stared at him, her lips pursed and her eyebrows raised. "So?"

Rancis didn't wilt under the force of her indifference. Give him credit, she supposed. Then again, Rancis had enough affection for himself that it would take a lot to convince him that he wasn't always as amazing as he thought he was. "So nothing. I just thought it was interesting. At least if the game breaks again, Litwak will be able to order a new part."

"I guess," Taffyta said. It would've been nice if Rancis had shared this information a few days ago. Honestly, until the last week, she hadn't been particularly concerned about the game breaking. Without Vanellope around to break it, what was going to go wrong? The rest of them had always been playable characters. They'd spent their whole entire lives being player controlled, and to do what Vanellope had done that day last year was unthinkable. You did not, _not_, NOTtake control away from the player, under _any _circumstance. The chances of something similar happening seemed slim to none with her gone.

Not that she was going to say that to Rancis. That was the sort of thought that she shared with King Candy and no one else.

Taffyta scooped some popcorn into her hand and popped a few kernels into her mouth. "So Vanellope's all up on the latest news now, but she only bothered to mention it to you. And anyway, she only comes to visit every few months, when her server-thing updates, so any news is _old _news by the time it gets here."

"Jealous that she told me and not you?" he asked gleefully.

She scoffed. "Yeah right."

They arrived back at the outlet and hopped into their karts. Taffyta punched the starter on hers and yelled, "Race you back!" It totally wasn't fair; Rancis was still fiddling with his seat belt, but you didn't win by playing fair. He shouted something but she was already careening into the dark tunnel between Game Central Station and _Sugar Rush_ and there was no way he was going to catch up. She flashed a victory sign over her shoulder just before the dark of the tunnel enveloped her.

Crouching low over the steering wheel, Taffyta pulled her hat off her head and then tucked her arms in. Warm wind in the tunnel whipped through her hair and she let out a yell of happiness, just before headlights in front of her blinded her for half a second. She swerved out of the way of the oncoming train, shifting and gunning it so her kart climbed halfway up the curved wall of the tunnel. NPCs on the train stared up at her, open-mouthed, and she just grinned and shifted again.

Within another minute, she shot out of the tunnel and onto the Rainbow Bridge. _Sugar Rush_. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, in the arcade or anywhere else in the world that was as beautiful as her game, and no one was ever going to convince her otherwise. The Kool-Aid Sea sparkled in the distance under the bright lemon drop sun. Cotton candy haze clouded the summit of Diet Cola Mountain and the trees of the Candy Cane Forest glinted over the pink taffy swamps. Sugar Rush Castle and the road leading to it glittered, the slopes of the hill blanketed in gleaming lollipop trees.

She'd spent the better part of fifteen years hanging out at the castle with King Candy, and when the game had reset seven years ago, she'd spent a few more months hanging out with him there in the fungeon. Following his…er…ingestion by a Cy-bug, and then death in Diet Cola Mountain, he'd been apprehended and kept there, unbeknownst to everyone in the game except Vanellope. Well, at least until Taffyta had gotten it into her head to go Turbo, run away to _Extreme EZ Living 2_, and come back with a virus. King Candy had saved first her, then the game when the virus had spread.

Eventually, Vanellope had let him out of the fungeon—and then, later, she'd let him race again, just never at the same time as her. Vanellope had scrapped the roster randomizer that she'd introduced and gone back to the Random Roster Race, and every three days, King Candy was allowed to take part in it. So six years had passed that way, and they'd all found a new normal.

Then _Sugar Rush _had been unplugged. Ugh, that was such a passive way of putting it, like it was just the their game's time to go or something. No, Vanellope had _gotten _the game unplugged through her own selfishness, and Taffyta knew full well that it was pretty rich that she was mad at the former president for going Turbo when her best friend literally _was _Turbo, but hey. She'd never claimed to be particularly pure of heart or free from hypocrisy.

Now Vanellope was gone. _Had _been gone for a whole nine months, actually, and it was funny how much those six years with her on the roster felt like the aberration. Once she'd gone, things felt…well, the way they had _before_. Was it a bad thing for Taffyta to admit that she didn't really miss Vanellope? Huh, probably. That was why she'd only ever say it to King Candy.

Her route home took her through Chocolate Town, around the outskirts of Gumball Gorge, and through Strawberry Fields, until she pulled into her garage at home with a screech of Pink Lightning's tires.

"_Very _dramatic. You didn't learn that from me, did you?"

Taffyta hopped out of her kart and pulled her hat back onto her head. "Nope, but I could've. You have a pretty serious flair for the dramatic, too."

King Candy laughed and leaned on the front of his kart with one hand. The hood was open and there was chocolate sauce streaked across his forehead from the oil pan. "_Moi_? How dare you, Miss Muttonfudge. Me, a flair for the dramatic?" He placed a hand over his heart and sighed.

Giggling, she walked over to join him. "What's up with the Royal Racer?"

His silliness evaporated as he put his hands on his hips and peered down at the engine. "Oh, nothing. I don't think. Well, nothing _wrong_, at least. She just seems a bit…sluggish, I just—did you see Jubileena pass me on Layer Cake Hill yesterday?"

"I pretended I didn't," she said.

"Hoohoohoo, thanks." Tightening a bolt with a wrench, he said, "You know, I used to just be able to code my own repairs. I suppose it's probably for the best, keep up my skills and everything." He cocked his head and stared critically at the engine, then looked at his hands, covered in chocolate sauce. "But it's so _messy_."

Taffyta perched on the door of the Royal Racer and said with interest, "I didn't know that. Kinda seems like cheating."

"Yes well, it also was probably the least questionable thing I did, so you know." He tightened another bolt. "I prefer to think of it as a shortcut, not cheating."

She watched him finish putting everything back together, and as he closed the kart's hood, she said, "Could you show me that? How you'd code a fix for whatever was wrong with your transmission?"

Wiping his hands on a rag and raising an eyebrow, he said, "It wasn't _wrong_. It just wasn't ideal."

"Yeah, yeah. So will you show me?"

King Candy flashed a grin at her. "You know, if you'd told me ten years ago that I'd be teaching you how to code, I would have…well, I would've wondered how my cover got blown first of all, and then how it was that we'd be discussing me teaching you coding so…blasély? Isth that a word? It's not, but, well, you know what I mean, and—" He stopped, put a finger to his chin, and then brightened, "Anyway, I'd have been surprised, to put it lightly."

With a pout, Taffyta said, "Yeah, everyone else would be surprised, too. People think I'm dumb."

"That's not what I meant." He tweaked the brim of her hat. "You know that _I _know how smart you are. Of course I'll show you, my dear." Then, raising his eyebrows, he added, "Did you do your assignment?"

She rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "Yeah, and I still don't really love you calling them 'assignments.'"

He wiped his forehead with the rag and tossed it onto a shelf behind him, then opened the door to the garage and held his arm out debonairly. "Oh, I dunno, it's kind of like going back to the good old days, isn't it? Remember when I used to teach you all my best moves? Well." He smiled slightly. "_Most_ of my best moves."

Taffyta kicked the door shut behind her and the two of them headed into the house from the garage. "Uh, yeah, Your Majesty, that was like what, practically twenty years ago? Pretty sure we became equals right around the time I convinced Vanellope to let me add on that extra wing of the house for you to live in."

"Did I ever say we weren't?" He smiled crookedly at her. "They're still assignments."

_That _had been a fun conversation. For awhile, Taffyta had been asking Vanellope for a lot of King-Candy-related favors. A permanent place for him to live had been the final one—after seven months of him sleeping on her couch, and no sign that anyone else had any interest in letting him become their new neighbor, she'd requested an addition to her house. It had given him his living space, separated from the main house by a walkway. After almost seven years, it was hard to imagine _not _rooming with him. Having someone around was nice and they both knew to stay out of the other's way if they needed to. The arrangement just _worked_. Taffyta was secretly happy that no one had wanted him setting up a homestead near them.

As Taffyta hung up her jacket, King Candy asked her, "How'd your thing go?"

"It was good," Taffyta said. "You should've come with us. It was fun until Surge made us clean up. But, plus side, we made him really mad. I thought he might have like, a stroke or something."

"Hoohoohoo, that _does _sound fun," he said. "But, you know, you don't need me there. It's good for you to hang around with your friends."

Crossing her arms over her chest, she pursed her lips and said, "Um, _you're _my friend, dum-dum."

He snorted. "_Well_, when you put it like that."

"Come on!" Taffyta said. "You're my best friend in the whole arcade! It's weird not having you there."

King Candy grabbed the terminal that he was using to teach her how to code. Giving her a dubious look, he said, "Mm, I think it might be weirder with me there."

Ugh, he got like this sometimes. Refusing to leave the game, unwilling to go to Game Central Station, where he'd feel the full force of the rest of the arcade's dislike for him. She did a quick mental calculation. Was it the anniversary of anything serious? No, _TurboTime _had been unplugged in February, and the anniversary of _Sugar Rush's _reset was still over a month away. Just one of those days, then, which he'd hidden before the game had reset but hadn't been able to in the seven years since then.

Well, if he was having a bad day, then she kind of saw it as her job to make it better. Batting her eyelashes at him, she said, "Can't you come next time? For me? Pleeeease?"

He arched an eyebrow. "You have pizza sauce on your neck. I think I can skip the monthly GCS food fight. Please tell me you at least had it in front of _Food Fight_ this evening?" Vigorously, she scrubbed at the crusty patch on her throat as he added, "Anyway, my presence sort of tends to be, you know, a mood killer."

"No it isn't." She sat down on the couch and he plopped down next to her, powering on the terminal as he did so. Taffyta watched the little screen light up, and then she said, "You can think it's stupid if you want, but I miss you when we're all out there."

"Watch out, we don't want to get too co-dependent here." When she didn't respond and just gave him an exasperated look, he said in a vaguely contrite tone, "Sorry. But listen, seriously, you don't need me around. You've got Candlehead and Rancis, I thought _they _were your best friends."

She shrugged. "Yeah, Candlehead and Rancis are my best friends, too. But like, you're not just my best friend in the arcade, you're my best friend in the whole world." She thought about that. "No, the whole universe."

For a second, he just looked at her. Then, reaching over to ruffle her hair, he said, "All right, all right. Fine. If it means that much to you."

With a smug smile, she crossed her legs underneath her and settled in for the day's coding lesson. But King Candy didn't speak for another minute. Instead, he continued watching her. "The whole universe?" he finally asked. "That'sth sort of…" But he trailed off.

"What?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Nothing. I'm just…you know."

"Touched?" she supplied with a giggle.

His fingertips garbled with red binary for a moment, and Taffyta saw his eyes flash yellow as the faint outline of a white helmet superimposed itself on King Candy's form. So, yeah. Definitely touched. These days, he only involuntary glitched when he was feeling emotional about something. She wouldn't make him say it.

Tapping on the terminal, she said, "So, where would I start if I wanted to like, make Pink Lightning accelerate fifty percent faster?"

* * *

Later, Taffyta woke up shivering.

_Shivering? _She'd fallen asleep with her blanket pulled up to her chin and her windows open to let the warm air of Strawberry Fields in. She was more used to waking up hot, sprawled over the top of her blanket, than cold. More than cold, _freezing. _Her teeth were chattering so hard that she couldn't see straight.

Her nose felt like ice and her first instinct was to pull the blanket up over her head. That wasn't going to do anything though. The problem definitely wasn't her, it was the temperature in the room itself—frigid, bitingly cold—more like the Frosty Mountains than her summery Strawberry Fields.

Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to slide out from underneath the blanket. The floor was worse than the air; it was like stepping on a block of ice. Her toes curled and she yelped, feeling off balance and just—strange, suddenly, the room seemed smaller, and she felt—_different_.

Her limbs were seizing and it was clear that the cold in the room was coming from the window. The gauzy white curtains were fluttering in a stiff, frigid breeze, and she minced her way over to the window to slam it shut.

And froze.

Taffyta's mouth fell open as she stood, one hand on the window, and stared outside.

Strawberry Fields was covered in white. Fluffy, white, cold _snow_.

"Oh, for Goober's _sake_," she muttered. Was something going on with the programming again? There hadn't been any problems since she'd brought the virus back seven years ago. The only person who would know would be King Candy, and that meant she had to ask him about this. He'd know. He knew _everything_, even though—

Something made her stop and think about that, and it was a feeling that seemed like it should have been foreign, but somehow… wasn't. The idea of King Candy knowing everything—that was a bit, well _childish_, wasn't it? Sure he was _smart_—brilliant actually, he was unquestionably the smartest person she knew—but that didn't make him _infallible_. Even if he knew what was going on with the weather (having spent enough time in the game's code, he probably did), it wasn't like he knew everything. It wasn't like he didn't make mistakes. Not just character mistakes, she'd never been so blinded by her affection for him that she couldn't see those, but logical ones too. He even messed up on the racetrack sometimes.

And she…hadn't ever really thought about it before.

That weird feeling washed over her again, which she wanted to attribute to the cold, except the room was quickly warming up with the window closed. It was warming up but it still seemed too small, and she still felt…unsettled.

Well, she needed to shake it off. King Candy would tease her—gently of course, he was never mean to her—and most of the time that was fine, but she wanted to…well she didn't want to look like this had scared her or something. In fact, it seemed very important, suddenly, that King Candy not look at her as just a little kid.

Taffyta took a breath and removed her hand from the window, then flipped her hair and turned towards the bedroom door.

There was a full-length mirror in the corner of the room that she spent a portion of every morning in front of, making sure her hair and makeup were suitably perfect before she appeared for the day's races. So she caught sight of herself.

And no question, she was a screamer. She wore her emotions on her sleeve. Everyone knew what Taffyta Muttonfudge was feeling every second of every day.

Still, by the standards of her screams, this was a pretty good one, a perfect mixture of shrill and high and piercing, it actually hurt as it tore itself from her throat.

There was a stranger standing in her room, a stranger in place of _her_, a stranger that…looked oddly like her.

Her scream cut off abruptly, and the figure in the mirror snapped her own mouth shut. Taffyta raised a hand to her hair, and the figure did too. Taffyta swallowed hard. The figure did too. Taffyta poked at her chest. The figure did too.

The _woman _did too.

She took a step closer to the mirror, her own blue eyes staring back at her in a face that was…sharper, _older_, on a longer and more graceful neck. And below the shoulders, her chest—well, there was no question, she had _breasts_, she had hips, she had a _figure _suddenly.

No wonder she felt unsettled. No wonder she felt different.

Taffyta Muttonfudge had grown up overnight.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

Taffyta took several deep breaths in and out, staring at her feet. This was a dream. This _had _to be a dream. There was no way that she'd gone to bed nine years old and woken up, what?

_Twenty-five_,her mind whispered. Her new _programming _whispered.

No. No way. This wasn't real. She shut her eyes tightly and pinched herself. "Ouch!" she yelped. Okay, so maybe she wasn't asleep. Maybe it was just…like…a hallucination. Sure. She'd _been _dreaming when she'd woken up, and she'd still been half-asleep when she saw herself in the mirror. When she looked again, she'd see her normal, nine-year-old self.

Steeling herself, Taffyta scrunched her face up and opened one eye. There was still a young woman in the mirror, making a stupid, wrinkly face at herself.

Her breath hitched in something close to panic, but she opened her other eye and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Experimentally, she prodded at her chest. It felt real enough. Trying not to hyperventilate, she peeked under the neckline of her nightgown, then quickly clapped a hand over it as she turned red. Yep, definitely, for sure real.

She swiveled around, trying to see her back in the mirror, and poked her backside. That seemed pretty real too. Turning to face the mirror once more, she said to the figure there—er, well, herself, "What the atomic fireball is going on?" Startled, she touched her throat. Even her voice sounded a little different. It was recognizably her, but she sounded…grown up. "This is really weird," she said. Obviously there was more going on here than an issue in the code vault. Something fundamental had changed in _Sugar Rush_.

One thing was for sure—she needed to talk to King Candy, like, ten minutes ago. She started to head for the bedroom door, but then she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Had her nightgown _always _been this short? She tugged at it, which did absolutely nothing. Sugar-frosted cookies, it was hardly covering _anything _in the back. With a frustrated noise she grabbed her tights and pulled them on underneath her nightgown. There.

The rest of the house looked the same. Nothing was out of place, everything was exactly the way they'd left it before both of them had gone to bed. Taffyta hopped down the three steps that led to the new—well, not new anymore, considering it had been there for over six years—wing of the house and tried the doorknob to the hallway. It turned in her hand and she padded down the corridor to his bedroom door. When she reached it, she raised a fist and knocked.

Silence.

Furrowing her brow, Taffyta knocked again, louder this time. When there was still no answer, she said through the door, "King Candy?"

He must have been asleep. But he still didn't respond, and it was unlike him to sleep this deeply. He always said he hadn't been programmed for the amount of sugar he consumed in this game and that he hadn't had a full night's sleep in decades because he was so wired all the time. When she suggested he eat less candy, he always looked at her like she was crazy and said, "But I _like _candy." She knocked for a third time, loud enough that it would definitely wake him up if he was just sound asleep.

When her knock was met with continued silence, she said, "Hey, are you okay? I'm coming in."

Luckily, this door was unlocked too, and as she pushed it open, she said, "Something really weird happened, I don't know what's—" But she stopped in the middle of her sentence _and _in the doorway as she looked around the room and saw that it was empty. She looked around in confusion. The bed didn't even look slept in. But he'd definitely said he was going to bed after they'd finished coding for the night. Would he have gone out again?

Taffyta looked around, as though the empty room was going to answer her unspoken questions. She didn't come in here often. It was pretty bare, though not as bare as it had been at first. He'd been accumulating things over the past six years. Next to the window was a painting she'd done for him six years ago, and it always made her feel warm and happy to see that he still treasured it.

Something caught her eye then. The door that led outside to the wraparound porch on the second storey (hey, she'd asked for an addition, no reason not to add on a few things from her own wishlist) was ajar. She approached it and peeked outside, shivering in the cold air. King Candy wasn't out there, either. Snow was accumulating on the porch. She didn't see any footsteps.

This was weird. Where was he? Could he have known something was going on and gone to check it out? She supposed that made as much sense as anything else. But where would he go? The castle? That was where the code vault was, that probably made the most sense. Maybe the town square, it was as much of a gathering place as anywhere else in the game. The starting line in the stadium was a possibility, too. She bit her lip, thinking. Well, it would be easy to check all three. And she'd probably run into someone who had seen him.

It occurred to her that _all _of her fellow racers were probably in their twenties now. What a bizarre thought. She caught sight of her legs and felt another rush of discomfiture.

Well, if she was going to find King Candy, she needed to put something warmer on. Was it winter everywhere, or just in Strawberry Fields? When she went back to her room and opened her closet, the question seemed to be answered for her, because she found a wool coat hanging there. It was bright pink, with a mint green fake fur collar, and she slipped it on over her nightgown gratefully.

Before she left, she checked the rest of the house for King Candy, but she wasn't surprised when she didn't find him. No, he'd be at one of the places she'd already thought of.

Stepping outside was a shock, not because she'd never been cold before—it was way colder in the Frosty Mountains—but because she'd never seen Strawberry Fields anything other than warm and summery, with honey pot bees buzzing around the white and pink blossoms. The snow in her yard sparkled in the bright sunlight and she paused for a moment to look at it. It was pretty.

Then, she opened the door to the garage and started. Pink Lightning was right where she'd left her, but so was the Royal Racer. Surely King Candy would have taken it somewhere if he'd gone out?

A tendril of unease snaked through her. Something wasn't adding up.

Her first stop was Sugar Rush Castle, where the Oreo guards that still watched the code vault informed her no one had come in or out of the castle in days. The guard who had opened the door kept staring at her after he'd told her this, and she snapped, "What?"

"You look different," he said.

"No kidding," she said, whirling and stomping away.

She tried the stadium next, but no one was there at all, so she went straight to Chocolate Town square. Here, at least, she had some luck. The first person she spotted was Crumbelina, standing over the fountain staring at her reflection. Taffyta hurried over to her after getting out of her kart and then stopped dead in her tracks. "Whoa, Crumbelina."

The other girl—woman—spun around. A look of profound relief washed over her face. "Oh my god, Taffyta, thank gumdrops, it's not just me!"

Taffyta practically had to pick her jaw up off the ground. "Crumbelina, you're like…really, really pretty." What an understatement. Crumbelina looked like a model. She was gorgeous, like, just as pretty as any of the _DDR _characters.

"You think so?" Crumbelina glanced over her shoulder into the fountain again and put a hand on her hip. "Now that I know I'm not the only one, this is kind of cool, right?"

"Um, I guess so," Taffyta said. Why did she feel so…so…inadequate? She hadn't even come to terms with the fact that she was a twenty-five-year-old woman and she already felt like she wasn't measuring up to her peers? That was messed up. "Hey, Crumbelina, have you seen King Candy?"

"Huh? No," Crumbelina said, looking back to her. "Wasn't he with you at your house?"

Taffyta wrapped her arms around herself. "No."

The roar of karts made her turn around to see Candlehead, Rancis, Jubileena, and Snowanna come roaring into the town square. They were all grown up, too, and looking at each one of them as they got out of their karts and approached the fountain was jarring. Candlehead hadn't put a jacket on before coming out. Well, at least nothing had changed there.

"Taffyta!" Candlehead shouted, throwing her arms around her. "What's going on?"

Snowanna was marveling at the new, slenderer shape of her hand. "Do you think this is some kind of glitch?"

Shaking his head, Rancis said, "No way. Why would a glitch turn us all into twenty-somethings?" His voice sent another jolt of shock through Taffyta. It was deeper than it had been just four hours ago.

"What's going on, then?" Jubileena asked.

All five of them swiveled to look at Taffyta. She blinked, then crossed her arms across her chest. It was a reminder that it wasn't flat anymore and she immediately moved them again, weirded out. "Why would _I _know?"

"Because you and King Candy are so tight," Snowanna replied, as if this was obvious.

Pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes, Taffyta said, "Seriously?" Like what, just because King Candy was her best friend, she'd absorbed all his coding skills through osmosis or something? He'd been teaching her some _rudimentary _coding, which she'd had no real world experience using because no one was going to let them code anything for real. Sure, maybe people weren't screaming and running from him anymore, but it didn't mean anyone was going to let him near a code vault. And she'd tied herself to him irrevocably now. No one would trust her around one, either.

But she looked at all of their faces, and they really did seem…well, like they thought she knew what she was talking about. On the track, sure. She was the best racer out of all of them. But this stuff? She hardly knew anything at all. Then again, hardly anything at all was still more than they knew.

Taking a breath, Taffyta said, "I think…I think the game must have gotten upgraded or something." This thought had occurred to her on the drive over from the stadium. The weather, the age-up, it wasn't a glitch. It was too purposeful. There were noises of shock and understanding from the rest of them, and this encouraged her to go on, "Rancis told me earlier that the company that makes the game got bought, right?"

"Yeah," Rancis said, clearly annoyed that he hadn't made this connection himself.

"Okay, so, I think…" What did she think? Ugh, she wished King Candy were here. "I think they must have wanted to like, drum up interest in the game again. We're probably old enough to be retro, right? So they released an upgrade." Who knew if she was right, but it sounded plausible, and they were all nodding like they thought she knew what she was talking about.

Candlehead looked pensive. "Were people getting bored with _Sugar Rush_?"

With a snort, Rancis said, "Remember how Litwak wouldn't even fork over two hundred dollars to buy the new steering wheel when ours broke? He said we don't make that much in a year."

"He unplugged our other cabinet, too," Crumbelina pointed out.

They all fell silent at that memory. Then, Jubileena said, "Guys, I don't think it's us." She hesitated. "I think it's just the arcade. There aren't as many gamers."

A shadow crossed Snowanna's face. "It's because of the internet. I mean, Vanellope even thought it was more exciting than here."

The six of them were quiet for a moment, considering this. The wound was still pretty raw for most of them. _Sugar Rush _just hadn't been _good _enough for Vanellope. When Ralph had come back without her the previous year, he'd glossed over the more damning stuff, but all of them could read between the lines. _Sugar Rush _was boring. Vanellope had gotten what she'd wanted out of it and she needed _more. _It had made the rest of them—well, at least it had made Taffyta—feel like bumpkins. _Were_ they boring? They were all content to drive the same tracks day after day, year after year, and none of them had ever wanted to leave.

Er, with the exception of Taffyta going Turbo seven years ago, of course, but that had been because she was upset at…well, pretty much everything, not because she was bored. She'd left because she _wasn't _getting to race on those same boring tracks. It was the only thing she'd wanted to do.

Taffyta's ears pricked up at the sound of more karts approaching, but she could tell by the sound alone that the Royal Racer wasn't among them. "Have any of you seen King Candy?" she asked. They all shook their heads. Candlehead looked surprised to hear the question.

The remaining racers arrived in ones and twos, and Taffyta's heart sank when King Candy wasn't one of them. The tendril of unease in her stomach exploded like a grenade into full-blown anxiety, sending shrapnel shards of panic ricocheting through her. Something was wrong. Where could he possibly be?

When she asked again, Swizzle crossed his arms over his chest and smirked. "Maybe he game-jumped."

Candlehead rounded on him. "Shut _up_, Swizz," she snapped. Taffyta had never heard her talk to anyone like that and it touched her. Moving to Taffyta's side and putting an arm around her, Candlehead said, "He wouldn't do that."

Rolling his eyes, Swizz asked, "Why? You guys act like he's some kind of good guy now, but maybe he was just waiting for the right opportunity. I mean, he lied to all of us for fifteen years, no reason he couldn't have been lying for the past seven."

"Come on, man," Rancis said, shooting Swizz a warning look. Could the rest of them see Taffyta's legs shaking? Her face felt bloodless suddenly and her stomach was roiling.

Swizz shrugged. "Whatever. I'm just saying."

"Yeah well, maybe cut it out," Rancis said, a little bit of a growl in his voice.

This finally shut Swizzle up. Taffyta wished she could express her gratitude to Rancis for sticking up for King Candy, but she couldn't seem to make a single sound. Probably because there was a cold, hard ball blocking her throat, like a jawbreaker she'd swallowed too soon.

There was an uncomfortable silence, and then Adorabeezle asked, "Has anyone gone to Game Central Station to let everyone else know what happened?" When all of them stared at her blankly, she looked exasperated and said, "I'll go." Then, she hesitated. "Taff, I'll ask about King Candy. I'm sure someone's seen him."

"Thanks, Dora," Taffyta said, trying to make her voice come out as normal as possible. It didn't work.

By this time, NPCs were gathering in the town square as well, wondering what had happened and marveling at the racers' new appearances. Some of Taffyta's fans kept looking at Rancis, Gloyd, and Swizzle and giggling, while more than one NPC gushed to Crumbelina and Minty how beautiful they were. Taffyta just sat on a bench, one leg crossed over the other and her arms folded across her chest. Good thing she'd found the coat, because even with it on, she was cold. She wasn't used to sitting around in winter weather. The sun seemed to be getting lower in the sky too. Did they have day and night now?

Eventually, Adorabeezle returned, and at Taffyta's unspoken question, she just shook her head. The knot in Taffyta's stomach twisted tighter.

As arcade opening approached, the town square began clearing out, until only Candlehead and Rancis remained. Every once in awhile, Candlehead patted Taffyta's shoulder. It didn't help, but it was nice that they were sticking around. She thought she might lose her mind if she was left alone. Her stomach was now fully clenched into a tight, hard knot that she expected to vomit up at any moment. Her palms were sweaty, she was shaking, and there was clearly something invisible and heavy sitting on her chest, because she couldn't seem to take a real breath.

"Taff," Candlehead said suddenly. "Look."

Wreck-It Ralph was hurrying into the square. He was alone. Taffyta's heart—what was left of it—sank.

When he caught sight of her, his face did that—that _thing _that people's faces did when they had to deliver bad news. First the panic as they realized the moment they'd been dreading was imminent, then the regret, then a mixture of resignation and resolve: a cycle of emotions like downshifting at the end of a race you already knew you were going to lose.

Candlehead and Rancis glanced at each other, then drew back so Taffyta was sitting on the bench by herself when Ralph reached her. "Any luck?" she asked. She didn't think she needed to specify what she was talking about. Her voice came out about an octave higher than normal.

Ralph sighed and put a hand to the back of his neck. Taffyta had to grit her teeth and try hard not to throw up. "No one's seen him. Surge even pulled the branches from all the outlets to see if he went in another game."

"Branches?" Taffyta asked, confused. "Do you mean logs?"

Waving a hand, Ralph said, "Whatever." Then, he sat down next to her. The bench groaned in protest and sagged under his weight, and Taffyta flailed an arm out to stop herself from sliding into him. "Sorry," he said with a wince, adjusting so the angle of incline wasn't as extreme. "Anyway, it doesn't look like he left _Sugar Rush_."

Taffyta had to remind herself to breathe. "So…so where is he?"

"Kid—"

"He must still be in _Sugar Rush _somewhere," she said frantically, not wanting to hear what he had to say. "Maybe he's…I don't know, did anyone check the code vault here?"

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Rancis tug Candlehead further away. With another sigh, Ralph said, "Kid. You know he wouldn't worry you like this. You're the only one he's ever shown that kind of consideration to, and he takes it pretty seriously."

Something was wrong with her heart, it wasn't beating in time, and it felt like it was leaping around from her sternum to her throat. Maybe the upgrade had messed up her internal organs, too. "Yeah well," she began, "he _has _to be around—"

Ralph turned towards her and put a hand on her shoulder. It was more like a finger on her shoulder, his hand was so huge. "Look, Taffyta. I'm not exactly some kind of hacker—if I was, I'd have coded myself a piece of pie once in awhile—but I think…" He trailed off and then took a breath and tried again. "He wasn't part of the game originally. So if _Sugar Rush _got upgraded, well…I mean, what I'm trying to say is, he might not have survived the upgrade."

Taffyta's whole world telescoped to a single point directly in front of her, and time did something really funny so that she wasn't sure if she'd been sitting there in silence for five hours or only five seconds. "But," she said. Her voice would barely come out. "But he coded himself into the game. He's part of it."

The look on Ralph's face had turned to pity. "Yeah, that's the thing, though. If everything got overwritten with the new code, he wouldn't have been in it. So…"

He didn't need to finish the sentence. Taffyta couldn't even finish it in her head. But there was no point in articulating it, because it was the thing she'd been afraid of all day, the thing that she'd kept trying to push down, to dismiss as absurd. Unthinkable. Impossible. She wouldn't say it. If she didn't say it, if she didn't even think it, maybe it wouldn't be true, even though she'd known for hours that it was.

Ralph was staring at her, his eyebrows drawn together in a craggy expression of concern. "Kid, look, I'm sorry, but I think he's gone."

The ground dropped out from under Taffyta and suddenly she didn't know if she was floating or falling or sitting completely stock still, like a rock candy sculpture. Her throat closed up and she started to shiver, her teeth chattering from shock, and her vision blurred with tears. He'd said it. Ralph had said it. And as stupid as she knew it was, it was like he'd made it real. She hated him for it.

She shot to her feet and almost lost her balance. She hated _all _of this. She hated her stupid new body, she hated the weather. _Sugar Rush _had been perfect the way it was, why had anyone wanted to change it? Why had Litwak done this to them?

It was hard to see through the slick of tears, but Candlehead and Rancis were coming towards her and Ralph was getting up. But she was crying now, her breath starting to hitch in hysterical sobs, and the last thing she wanted was to be around any of them. She turned and hurried in the opposite direction, tripping over her feet, which somehow made everything seem so much worse.

"Taffyta!" Candlehead called in an anguished tone, but no way was she stopping. Taffyta walked faster, then broke into a run, not caring where she was going, only knowing that she had to get away from them. She blundered to the edge of the square and somehow spotted her kart. She barely remembered driving here earlier, but, now sobbing in earnest, she got in, started it, and tore out of Chocolate Town.

She didn't have a destination in mind. All she could do was drive; hold her foot down on the pedal and clench her fist around the gearstick and feel the kart hum through her body. She couldn't even see what she was passing, and she wasn't thinking about anything, because to think, she'd have to face the gaping black pit inside her; have to look directly at it and acknowledge it there and if she did she'd fall in and there'd be no getting out, there'd be no coming back.

Without meaning to, she found herself in the Frosty Mountains. It felt ten times colder than normal and the road seemed icier, and it occurred to her that maybe the tracks would be different. Maybe none of them were the way she remembered and none of the accumulated muscle memory from the past twenty-two years would do her any good.

It occurred to her, but not in time to prepare for the hairpin turn in the track that she knew exactly how fast to take—at least, she _had _known. Now, the moment she slid into it, she knew she'd miscalculated. Her kart fishtailed and she panicked, cranking the wheel in the opposite direction to try to correct. But she lost control, and Pink Lightning went careening off the track into a huge snow drift, crashing into it with an explosion of powdered sugar snow.

Taffyta stumbled out of the drift, not caring that she was covered in snow. It was caked all over her coat and in her hair, but all she did was stand there, shivering in the wind. Of course she was _here_. Of course.

Putting her head down, she trudged away from her kart towards a small side road, not part of any track, that wound up the highest peak in the Frosty Mountains. The walk seemed to take an eternity and no time at all. When she reached the end of the road, she hugged her arms around herself and blinked ice out of her eyelashes. Tears were frozen to her cheeks and as new ones formed and squeezed out of her eyes, they felt boiling on her skin. Had she been crying this whole time? Probably.

This had been their spot. Their favorite place in the game, this overlook in the Frosty Mountains, where you could see all of _Sugar Rush _laid out at your feet like a sparkling jewel in a Ring Pop. It was the place where their friendship had taken root, so many years ago, when he'd told her that she, out of all the racers, was his favorite, that she reminded him of himself, and that he would take her under his wing and mentor her. It had always been special, a place where Taffyta could go whether she was happy or sad, a place that always held the memory of a day that her heart had been so full that she hadn't known what to do with herself.

For a long moment, she stood there, her fingers digging into her arms so hard that she could feel bruises forming. The sun was definitely moving across the sky, and right now it was getting close to setting. It was just starting to turn the sky pink and the snow that had fallen earlier was sparkling in the fading light. It was beautiful. At any other other time, it would have taken her breath away.

But now she let out a wounded, keening sound and sank to her knees, buried her face in her hands, and sobbed. After everything, after all the hard times they'd been through, how could this happen? King Candy had survived getting _TurboTime _and _RoadBlasters _unplugged. He'd kept himself alive in Game Central Station for ten years. He'd survived being eaten by a Cy-bug, turning into one, getting boiled alive in Diet Cola Mountain. And then he'd survived _another _unplugging when _Sugar Rush _had broken last year.

Taffyta choked on her own tears and snot, unable to make her lungs draw air in because she was crying so hard. She hated this, every single bit of this horrible upgrade, her stupid new adult body, the stupid weather, the stupid beautiful setting sun.

King Candy was dead. She didn't know what she was going to do.


	3. Chapter 3

Author's note: Hope people are enjoying this :) I feel like I need to mention you can play a fun game of 'spot the references to Lin-Manuel Miranda penned lyrics' in this fic, if you're so inclined.

* * *

CHAPTER 3

Was this worse than seven years ago when _Sugar Rush _had reset? King Candy had died then too, as far as she'd known. Taffyta could remember the despair, the confusing, contradictory pain she'd felt at both his betrayal and his death, but she couldn't separate it from the fact that she knew now he'd actually been alive the whole time. She knew, intellectually, that those three months had been bad. They'd been the hardest three months of her entire life. But she'd had her anger, too. All she had now was grief.

She stopped racing. She stopped doing anything, even getting out of bed. What was the point? If she huddled under the covers, she could turn her brain off. Her mind stopped working, stopped thinking, stopped feeling, even though she quickly discovered that it wasn't her brain doing the feeling. And though she couldn't get rid of the ache that was there in place of her shattered heart, she could at least float through the blackness without smashing the pieces even further into dust.

Except it didn't work all of the time. She would remember something he'd said, something they'd done together. An impromptu race, a trip to _Tapper's. _The coding session where a light bulb had gone on in her head and she'd _gotten _it for the first time and the look of pride on his face, even though for him this was the easiest of easy stuff. The time they'd gotten lost in the sewers in _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles _and told increasingly absurd ghost stories until someone found them. Racing in _Tron_, where he beat her every time but she always said, "One of these days, I'm going to win." Well, she wasn't. She'd never race him again. The pain was unbearable.

There was no choice but to bear it, though. Well, if what she was doing could be called bearing it. A few times during that first week, someone knocked on the door or called her name, but she just kept her eyes closed and pulled her blanket over herself further.

What had King Candy felt as his code was being ripped apart? Had it hurt? Had he known what was happening? Had he tried to call for help? Was there something she could have done, if only she hadn't been sleeping? If she could just go back, she was sure she could keep him in the game through sheer force of will. She'd hold onto him. She wouldn't let him go.

That was stupid, of course. You couldn't go back. You could only go forward and live with the choices you made. Or the choices that someone else made for you.

One week after the—after—after _it_, Taffyta woke from a foggy doze to the sound of the front door opening. Maybe she should have locked it, but no one ever locked their doors in _Sugar Rush._ It hadn't occurred to her when she'd stumbled home a week ago. She was sure she must have gone downstairs to eat at least once or twice, but she couldn't really remember—and in any case, she obviously hadn't locked the door then, either.

She could hear whispered voices making their way up the stairs and when footsteps reached her door, there was a tentative knock. "Taffyta?" Candlehead's voice said. "Can we come in?"

At first, Taffyta didn't respond. Maybe they'd go away if they thought she wasn't here. But then, when the whispering continued, she resigned herself to the fact that she was going to have to talk to someone. She opened her eyes and stared at the wall, then said, "Yeah."

The door creaked open. "Taffy?" Candlehead said. "We're worried about you."

"No one's seen you in days," someone else said. Rancis. She still wasn't used to his voice.

Taffyta felt like her whole body was functioning in slow motion. Even her blinking felt like it was happening at quarter speed. Did she need to say something? She really didn't _feel _like saying anything. But she'd told them they could come in, so maybe she should prove she wasn't dead. "I'm here," she said, maybe unnecessarily.

Footsteps shuffled closer and Candlehead said in a small voice, "We were wondering if you want to do the Random Roster Race? We haven't started it yet tonight, so you can still race if you want to."

She didn't answer for a moment, not because she was thinking about it, but because talking just seemed to take so much effort. "No thanks," she finally said when the silence stretched so long that she could hear the two of them fidgeting.

She could imagine the way they were looking at each other, like, there goes Taffyta, being difficult. They didn't get it. What was the point of racing? You did what you were supposed to do, you did the same thing every day and you were amazing at it, but that didn't stop someone from taking everything away from you.

"We're down to thirteen racers. We could really use you," Rancis said, and then he exclaimed, "Ow! What was that for?"

"That was _insensitive_," Candlehead hissed.

"Yeah, but it's true," Rancis said. His voice got sadder and gentler. "Taff, hey, I know that…well, I know we don't know how you're feeling. But I _do _know King Candy wouldn't have wanted you to stop racing. You know it, too."

Taffyta kept staring at the wall. "It doesn't really matter what King Candy would've wanted," she said.

The mattress sank down as someone sat on it. There was a light touch on her back and Candlehead said, "Yeah it does." There was a hesitation, then the other woman added, "Just because…just because he's gone doesn't mean he's _gone._"

Rancis moved closer. "He taught you pretty much everything he knew. If you race, that's like…well, it's like…"

But he trailed off. Taffyta didn't need him to finish the sentence, anyway. She could fill in the blank. _It's like he's out there still. It's like a memorial. It's like a—like a—a testament to his legacy. _Yeah well, what _was _his legacy, anyway? Who else really cared, who else really even noticed, that he was gone?

She curled into a tighter ball and closed her eyes again. Yeah, that all sounded really great, but it didn't change the fact that he wasn't here. They were all nothing but ones and zeroes arranged in a collection of sentient blobs of flesh. When you died, you died. Those ones and zeroes went back out into the universe. It wasn't like there was part of him still around watching her.

"Taffyta?" Candlehead tried. "Please come out. We know you're sad. I'm sad too." And she actually sounded sad, she really did.

Tears leaked slowly out of Taffyta's eyes and she turned her face into the mattress. "Not today," she said, her voice muffled by the sheets. She could feel them getting damp as she continued to cry. "Maybe…" What? Tomorrow? Yeah right. The thought of moving from this spot was too daunting to contemplate for real.

"But—" Candlehead said.

Then Rancis said quietly, "No, c'mon." Candlehead's weight disappeared from the bed and Rancis added, "We'll leave you alone Taff, but we're gonna come back, okay? We'll see you tomorrow."

"Whatever."

There was a sigh and then the sound of footsteps retreating before her door closed quietly. Taffyta kept her face turned into the mattress, listening as they descended the staircase and left. She slipped back into a doze, with no idea if minutes or hours were passing. It didn't matter, anyway. Minutes, hours, days—who cared? She had all the time in the world to lie there feeling the same cold, lonely emptiness. Why keep track of how much of it was going by?

And then, suddenly, she opened her eyes. It was bright on the other side of her duvet, brighter than it had been in the past week. Something niggled at her and she realized it was curiosity. She'd felt nothing but misery for a week and this was completely, totally foreign. What was she supposed to do with it?

She blinked at the brightness shining through the duvet, and then, experimentally, she pulled the blanket off her head.

The curtains were open and the sun was shining directly in, making a path of golden light across the floor and her bed. Before, the sun had never shined through her bedroom window. It hadn't been in the right position in the sky. But it wasn't stationary anymore. Why hadn't she noticed this for the past week?

Oh, Candlehead and Rancis. One of them must have opened the curtains. Taffyta pushed her hair out of her face. It snarled around her fingers. Gross, and it felt really ratty and greasy. Pushing the duvet off herself, she turned so that she could see herself in the mirror. Her new appearance was still a shock, but what was worse was her paleness. Her face was drawn and sad, her eyes were red and puffy from crying. Had she been crying nonstop since last week?

She put a hand to her cheek. Her skin felt rubbery and damp. So, maybe. Probably. There were mascara streaks under her eyes and on her cheekbones, but most of it had been rubbed off already. Still, what a mess.

Her stomach growled and she looked down at it, trying to remember what she'd eaten last. Or, for that matter, _when _she'd eaten last. She looked at herself in the mirror again. Then, she slid out of her bed, wincing as her feet landed on the cold floor.

In the kitchen, she made herself a sandwich out of cinnamon bread, Nutella, and strawberry jam, eating it slowly as she stood at the table. Before she even quite knew what had happened, she realized her hands were empty, and she quickly made herself another one, gobbling that one down, too. Then, she ran a hand through her hair again. Maybe it wouldn't be the worst idea to take a shower.

Once she'd done that, it made sense to get dressed. It was the first time she'd put on her clothes since the upgrade. Everything was cut a little different—both her dress and her jacket were designed to showcase the fact that she had a figure now, and her dress had a V-neck. Not too low cut, she was relieved to see once she put it on. Crumbelina's dress had been way more revealing than Taffyta had been prepared to accept for her own outfit—not that there was much any of them could do about it.

Well, that wasn't exactly true. With a small, humorless smile, she realized she could code whatever outfits she wanted for them. It would probably take her awhile, and there'd likely be some sartorial mishaps along the way, but that kind of cosmetic coding was exactly the kind of stuff she could handle.

The smile dropped off her face, not that it had been much of a smile to begin with. That was probably the most coding she'd ever learn. She didn't think she was smart enough to continue on her own.

Pain ripped through her chest at that thought. _On her own. _She put her hands over her face and gave one broken sob, but her body was out of tears and her eyes stayed dry. For several long minutes, she stood that way. Then she jumped as a voice boomed through the game. Quarter alert. She hadn't even noticed them for the past week. They'd just been background noise. Well, at least she knew the arcade was open, though she didn't have any idea what time it was otherwise.

With a sigh, she looked out the kitchen window. Her eyes fell on the garage and another unfamiliar emotion picked at her. Guilt wasn't much better than devastation, but she felt bad, suddenly, that she'd neglected Pink Lightning for so long. She hadn't thought about her kart once in all that time. For days, she hadn't even felt like a racer, just a mass of agony.

Tucking her hair behind her ears, she slipped on her shoes and headed outside. The garage was heated. At least the upgrade had gotten _that _right. With the amount of time she spent out there, it would need to be. For the first time, she wondered how long their new seasons would last, but she couldn't muster up any more curiosity to think about it for a second or two.

Pink Lightning was sitting exactly where Taffyta had parked her a week ago, gleaming in the bright winter sun. The Royal Racer was parked where King Candy had been working on it. Everything was untouched. Everything was exactly the same as it had been that night. Except nothing was the same.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, Taffyta took a few steps forward and put a hand on her kart. Pink Lightning's smooth surface was comforting. Her oldest friend, who'd always been there for her. After a moment, she climbed in and sat down. The kart must actually have been just a little bigger, because everything felt exactly the same, and she was definitely taller. Putting a hand on the gearstick, she closed her fingers around it, then leaned back in the seat, reached her foot to the gas pedal, and closed her eyes.

King Candy wouldn't have wanted her to stop racing. She knew that. She knew that deep in her code.

There was a clock on the wall in the garage and she opened her eyes to look at it. 9:57. The arcade closed at 10:00.

The ache behind her sternum was eating her from the inside out, but she made herself reach out and push the starter. Pink Lightning hummed to life with a purr and Taffyta put her foot on the clutch. The garage door opened automatically, letting in a flood of cold air. With a deep breath, she shifted and drove, heading for the stadium.

* * *

The other racers looked happy, but surprised, to see her. Candlehead clapped and jumped up and down and Rancis beamed. Taffyta rolled into place at the starting line, all the way to the left, then went to throw her coin into the Winner's Cup. She could feel everyone's eyes on her for the entire walk there but she refused to look at any of them. Which was stupid. It wasn't like she was trying to prove something. _They_ were the ones that had wanted her to race.

Maybe she was just too proud to come out here and show any weakness. Yeah. Nine or twenty-five, she hated looking weak.

As her coin disappeared into the Winner's Cup, her name appeared at the bottom of the lineup, the fourteenth and final racer. For a moment, she stared at the blank space underneath her name, feeling the ache in her chest scratching its way out. Then, she turned away, stuck a lollipop in her mouth, and went back to her kart, her shoulders hunched. Hopefully the rest of them could tell she didn't want to talk.

It was still weird to see her friends and coworkers as a bunch of adults. She guessed eventually she'd get used to it. It wasn't like she had much of a choice.

A floating marshmallow came by and asked Jubileena, "Are we ready?"

"Everyone's here," Jubileena said in a tone that Taffyta found annoyingly bright.

The marshmallow gave a thumbs up to another marshmallow, who was holding the traffic light that would signal the race's start.

Jubileena got into her kart in the place next to Taffyta and shot a glance over at her. "Hey, it's really good to see you, Taffyta," she said. "I'm glad you're back."

Taffyta flicked her lollipop away and put her helmet on, pulling the visor down over her eyes. "Yeah," she said, which was neither disavowal or agreement. That seemed best.

Up and down the starting line, the racers started their karts, filling the air with the roar of engines. The cheering of the crowd was barely audible over it. Taffyta flexed her fingers on Pink Lightning's steering wheel and put her foot on the pedal, resting it there without pushing down. The traffic signal turned on with a blare, shining bright red.

She drew in a breath. She hadn't raced in a week. She couldn't walk ten feet without tripping over her own feet. Her body felt like someone else's. Maybe she wouldn't have the coordination for this. Plus, she already knew the tracks were different. Everyone else had been learning them for a week. Maybe she was about to make a fool of herself. Maybe she was going to come in fourteenth.

The light turned yellow. She revved the engine and put her hand on the gearstick. If King Candy was gone, then that meant she had to race like him.

A fraction of a second before the light turned green, Taffyta jammed one foot down on the clutch, one on the gas, and shifted.

The light turned green and Taffyta rocketed away from the starting line out into first place. Adorabeezle and Candlehead passed her—no big deal, their karts had better acceleration. Chocolate Town Square and its fountain were a blur of rainbow light refracting off snow and sparkling sugar as she zoomed by, still in third place. Rancis was right on her tail. Hanging back purposefully? A small smile flickered over her face. What, did he think a gumball was going to take her out in the Gorge?

She checked her mirrors and leaned low over the steering wheel on the straightaway out of Chocolate Town. Gloyd, Jubileena, Snowanna, and Minty were coming up fast in a pack but she hit the jump that would take her from Chocolate Plain into Gumball Gorge ahead of them.

Her kart bounced as she landed. A gumball was already rolling towards her but she avoided it easily and then snagged a power-up. Just Sprinkle Spikes; not great. She punched the button on her steering wheel to use it and they spat out behind her, taking out Rancis, who was still shadowing her. Taffyta grinned as she watched him spin out in her side mirror, and then she turned her attention back to the race. There was a clank to her right and she flicked her gaze in that direction to see a gumball being released just in front of her. _This _one was going to be more of a challenge.

She took her foot off the gas and downshifted, allowing Jubileena, Snowanna, Gloyd, and Minty to pass her. Jubileena screamed as she realized what was happening at the same time that Minty swerved to avoid the gumball. They crashed into each other and then the gumball rolled over them. Taffyta jammed her foot on the gas and shot forward, grinning at the shouted argument that Jubileena and Minty were having about whose fault the crash had been even as they regenerated.

Gloyd swerved too wide in front of her to avoid another gumball and she passed him, skirting the edge of it as it rolled within inches of her kart. She hit the boost pad just behind Snowanna, coaxing a little extra speed out of Pink Lightning so that she landed slightly ahead of the other racer. Snowanna, surprised, hesitated a second too long, allowing Taffyta to put space between them.

Third place again. Adorabeezle was in second and as Taffyta hugged the curves on Layer Cake Hill, she gained quickly, drawing neck and neck with her as they reached the cookie straw at the top. "I thought you'd be easy to beat!" Adorabeezle yelled over the wind and the roar of engines.

Taffyta flashed her a confident grin. "Yeah right!"

The two of them shot out of the straw and sailed through the air. As the wind whistled past her, Taffyta counted the seconds by her breathing. One, two, three, and _go_. She shifted as she hit the ground, shooting into second place. Now she just had to catch Candlehead.

The Royal Raceway climbed steeply into the Frosty Mountains. Before long, Taffyta had drawn close to Candlehead. They careened around the slick curves in the road, Candlehead barely maintaining her lead but holding onto it. As they drew close to the entrance to the Rainbow Ice Caves, Taffyta's eyes locked on the Road Closed sign in front of the steep side road that led down the slope of the mountain. Well, of course. Had there ever been any other choice?

She downshifted and crashed through the sign, catching Candlehead's surprised look before the other woman, and the main track, were lost to sight.

Normally this shortcut would have made her nervous, but everything else around her was moving so slowly, as though the whole world was encased in Karo syrup, that she had time—plenty of time—to line up her next move far in advance. This road was more like a chute than a track and she only tapped the steering wheel around the hairpin turns, knowing that to move too aggressively would send her plummeting over the edge into the snowy abyss. A section of the road in front of her was missing and she revved her engine, then jumped the gap.

Then she entered the Rainbow Ice Caves through a jagged hole in the mountain, on a curve, with a glowing wall of blue and purple ice immediately in front of her. She yanked up on the handbrake and drifted around the corner, coming within a hair's breadth of nicking the ice. As she rounded the bend, the caves opened up in front of her, a kaleidoscopic aurora of luminous ice. A stalagmite forked the road in front of her and she zoomed past it, staying low in preparation for the low clearance that she knew was coming. The flags on King Candy's kart had hit the ceiling there every time, and there were two deep scores in the ice because of it. When she cleared that, she found herself on a track running parallel to the main road, with the two separated by a wide gap. The roar of both her engine and Candlehead's echoed off the hard walls, bouncing sound around in a confusing din.

And then, fifty feet ahead of her and approaching fast, she spotted the end of the road. Literally the end of the road, since this track ended in a solid wall of ice. She narrowed her eyes and took a breath. Then she gunned it and jumped.

This was by far the most difficult shortcut in the entire game. It had been fifteen years before she'd been brave enough to attempt it, even after watching King Candy pull it off flawlessly for most of that time. Everyone thought of it as his shortcut. But she'd always been terrified of falling, and a fall off the road in the Rainbow Ice Caves was a particularly disorienting and painful experience. You didn't just have to jump the gap between the two roads—you had to land on the main track perfectly, because if you overshot it or overcorrected, you'd slide right off the other side.

Even when she'd worked up the nerve to give it a shot, it had taken her way more attempts than she cared to admit to get it right. That had been only days before the game's reset seven years ago. His encouragement, despite her failure, had been unflagging. Then he'd laughed and said, "I almost said you're going to be a better racer than me one of these days, but hoo-hoo, it's hard to be greater than the greatest racer ever."

She still couldn't pull it off with one hundred percent success. But today, she knew she'd done it perfectly.

She landed on the road with a crunch and a spray of ice. In her mirror, she saw Candlehead slam on her brakes and fishtail. Wild exhilaration filled her chest and she let out a victorious whoop.

No one could catch her now. Adorabeezle, Crumbelina, and Swizz all got gummed up behind Candlehead and Taffyta rocketed out of the caves and back onto Chocolate Plain. When she crossed the finish line, a fierce grin lit her face. You could upgrade all you wanted, change her appearance, change the game, but Taffyta Muttonfudge was an incredible racer and nothing was going to take that away.

One after another, the other racers screeched to a stop. The smile that Candlehead shot her was brighter than the flame on her candle, even though she'd come in second.

Taffyta smiled back. And then, abruptly, all her happiness fizzled to nothing. For the five and a half minutes that the Random Roster Race had taken, she hadn't thought about the fact that King Candy was gone. A lance of guilt and pain clawed at her. How could she forget, even for a second?

Candlehead was coming towards her, and when she reached her side she said, "Taffyta, you looked amazing! You did the Rainbow Ice Caves shortcut, I _never _manage to do that right, I fall every time; hey, do you want to go for burgers at _BurgerTime_?"

Staring at her steering wheel, Taffyta said, "Um, no. I think I'm just going to go. See you tomorrow…"

"But—" Candlehead said.

Taffyta started her kart and Candlehead jumped back as she tore away from the stadium, stopping only to collect her winnings from the Winner's Cup. She'd race, and she couldn't stop herself from being happy while she was doing it. But that didn't mean she was back to normal. She wasn't going to pretend any different.


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

For hours after the Random Roster Race, Taffyta drove aimlessly around the game. There were fifteen new tracks and she visited most of them, surveying them flatly and wondering how fast all the other racers were learning them. She wished she believed that King Candy actually had some way of knowing what she was doing, but that was a stupid, babyish thought.

The next day she raced, and if you'd asked anyone if something was wrong, they would have said, 'not when she's still driving like that.' At least, they would have, Taffyta figured, if they weren't scowling at her for beating them again. Normally she would have taken great pleasure in that fact. Winning for its own sake was great, but beating everyone else made it especially satisfying. But it was just a footnote now. She didn't really care how her repeated winning made anyone else feel.

After the following night's Random Roster Race, Candlehead asked again if she wanted to hang out, and again, Taffyta refused, leaving to drive circuits around the game. She fell into a lonely routine, talking to her coworkers only before and after races, and avoiding them if she happened to see them while the arcade was closed. The thing was, if she was around them, they wanted to talk—especially Rancis and Candlehead. She knew they were just trying to help, but she didn't want to talk about her feelings. She didn't want to talk about how she was sad, and how time would make it better. Time wouldn't make it better because _nothing _would make it better.

A week later, after her nightly drive, she trudged into the house and made herself a dinner of marshmallows and cake. As she sat at the table eating it, she stared morosely at the empty chair across from her. She began to sniffle, and then she planted her elbow on the table and covered her eyes with her hand. While she was racing, all the sadness faded away, but now it was back in full force, just as bad as it had been when she'd finally dragged herself out of bed.

She removed her hand from her face and stared at the chair. Suddenly her anger at Litwak and this stupid update bloomed red hot. Why had he done this to them? People played _Sugar Rush_, it wasn't like gamers were bored with it. They all did their jobs every single day and this was the reward they got? Someone who didn't know anything about them rewriting everything?

She shot to her feet and grabbed the chair, dragging it away from the table and to the closet. There was no point in having two chairs anymore, was there? It was just a horrible reminder that King Candy was gone and never coming back. Giving the chair a shove, she swung the door to shut the closet.

But the chair slid out before the door shut, bashing her shins with a crack of sharp pain. "_Ouch!_" she yelled, grabbing at her leg and hopping around on one foot. Tears stung at her eyes and before she could stop them, she was sobbing again. She hated this. She hated _all _of this and she just wanted everything to go back to the way it had been but it never was going to and she was going to have to spend the whole rest of her life feeling this way.

Then there was a knock on the door. Taffyta wiped her face on her hand, wondering if she could just yell at whoever it was to go away. She didn't need the other racers to check on her. Then again, they'd probably just come in anyway. Maybe it was time to start locking the door.

Still sniffling, she went to open the door. To her surprise, Felix was on the other side.

"Oh!" she said, letting her arm fall to her side. She could feel mascara plastered to her face where it had run. Something like that would have been mortifying before. Now she didn't really care.

Felix, on the other hand, looked horrified. "Oh my land, Taffyta, is everything okay here? Wait, no, what a dummy I am, of course it's not, here, let's get you comfortable—"

"No, Felix, it's fine, I don't need you to—"

But he was already ushering her back inside, bringing her to the couch solicitously, and then digging around in her kitchen, insisting that he was going to make her tea. "Have you eaten, kiddo? Oh, er, yes you have, I can see that…well nothing like a balanced, er, dinner."

"It's what we eat here, Felix," she said tiredly. They'd been having this argument for almost a year now, ever since he and Calhoun had taken in the homeless _Sugar Rush _racers.

"I know, I know, you keep telling me, but I still think it wouldn't hurt to have a a plate of vegetables now and then." He sat down next to her with a mug of tea and held it out. "Here, drink this. And here, blow your nose." He gave her a tissue and she laughed a little, then did as he said.

Patting her shoulder, Felix said, "Jiminy jaminy, I should have come earlier. I'm real sorry, Taffyta, I can only imagine how hard a time you've been having."

She thought about saying that he was right, the only thing he could do was imagine it, but she didn't. It wasn't Felix's fault. "Yeah," she said instead. Then, because she didn't know what else there was to say, she wrapped her hands around the mug of tea and sipped at it.

"So how _are _you holding up?" he asked hesitantly. "Candlehead and Rancis say your racing's been dynamite all week."

Well, yeah. When it was the only thing that gave you any kind of pleasure in life, you were going to do it well. All she'd done for a week was drive in her free time, so she knew all the new tracks pretty well now. "I guess," she said with a shrug, staring at the steam curling out of her mug.

Felix leaned forward to catch her eye, his brow furrowed. Oh, great. She knew that look. Snowanna had cornered her last night looking the exact same way and Taffyta had snarled at her before the other woman had given up and left. "Look, I'm not going to beat around the bush. Tammy and I are worried about you."

"You don't have to worry," Taffyta said, still staring at the curlicues of steam.

"'Fraid it's our job to worry, kiddo." Putting his hands on his legs, he asked, "How would you like to come over for dinner tomorrow at our place?"

Looking up at him, she said, "What? No, Felix, honestly, you guys don't have to do that. I don't want to like, put you out or anything."

"Why, it's no trouble at all," he said. "What do you say? Just the three of us? I'm making chili and cornbread. Blue ribbon recipe. It's been in the family for generations."

"Um—"

He put a hand on her shoulder. "It'll do you good, Taffyta." Then, in a parental tone, he added, "And I don't mean to criticize your cooking, sweetie, but we need to get some decent food in you."

That made her smile a little. As much as she didn't feel up to interacting with other people for more than a minute or two at a time, it might benefit her in the long run to prove that she could still function. People would probably be less likely to bug her later. And it had been awhile since she'd been over to Felix and Calhoun's place. With the update, spending time with them had gone completely out of her mind. "Okay," she said.

He beamed. "Fantastic! Why don't you come on over around midnight? That should give me enough time to get dinner on the table after the arcade closes."

Even though she nodded, his smile faded to a concerned look. Maybe she needed to do a better job proving she was fine, even though she most definitely wasn't. "Sure. Yep. That sounds great," she said.

There was a silence before Felix got to his feet. There was still a troubled look on his face. Obviously she hadn't been very convincing. "Well, okay then. I suppose we'll see you tomorrow."

Getting to her feet, Taffyta said, "Yeah. Looking forward to it." She wasn't, but that was the kind of thing you needed to say, she knew that now that she was twenty-five instead of nine. "Thanks for the tea," she said.

"You're welcome," he said. He hesitated, then opened the door to let himself out. "Have a good day out there racing tomorrow."

She waved as he closed the door, trying to smile. As soon as it shut, the smile fell right off her face. Agreeing to that had probably been a mistake. The only times she'd managed to stop crying for more than fifteen minutes straight were when she was driving, and even that wasn't a sure bet. Putting a hand to her forehead, she went back to the couch and sat down heavily, burying her face in her hands.

* * *

"So, Taffyta, how was racing today?"

She shrugged. "Good."

Felix and Calhoun shared a look that they must have thought was surreptitious as she swallowed a spoonful of chili. They'd been doing it all night when they thought she wasn't looking. Most of the time, she really liked having pseudo-parents, but right now she couldn't help feeling like they were just…well, kind of in her face. On the way over to _Fix-It Felix Jr._, she'd wondered if it would be weird now that she was grown up. It turned out it really wasn't—in fact, they were still kind of treating her like a kid, which was weird in a different way.

"How many times did you win?" Calhoun asked.

Dipping a piece of cornbread in her chili, she said with another shrug, "A hundred and two. Gold ninety-six of them."

The two of them beamed and she thought about pointing out that this was pretty normal for her. She'd even had one or two days in the past twenty-two years where she'd had a perfect record, first place in every single race. It seemed to make them think that it was a sign of recovery. Like just because she could still drive meant everything was better.

"Why, that's great, Taffyta!" Felix said, his tone overly chipper. Which, considering it was Felix, was really saying a lot. Taffyta just kept her eyes downcast.

Calhoun leaned across the table. "You don't seem very proud of doing so well."

After swallowing another spoonful of chili, Taffyta said, "I don't know. It's normal for me. It's nothing to be proud of."

A dismayed look crossed Felix's face. "But, of course it is, Taff! Even if it's normal for you, you should still be proud of yourself! You're a great racer and you should take pride in that."

Deep down, she knew he was right. The weird thing was she always _had _been proud of it. But ever since King Candy had died, it had seemed simply like something she needed to do. She'd always demanded a high standard for herself, but now she couldn't do anything else. So she just made an inarticulate noise and ate some cornbread.

Felix and Calhoun looked at each other again and Taffyta realized how much it was setting her on edge. "Hey, maybe you guys can knock that off?" she said. "I'm not like, about to go postal or something."

To their credit, the two of them immediately looked guilty. "No, no, of course not!" Felix said hastily. "We're just…"

"We're just worried," Calhoun finished.

"Yeah, I know. You've said." A tendril of anger snaked through her and even though she knew it was irrational, she snapped, "Everyone's _really _worried about me. I get it, okay? You have to look out for Taffyta, she's _so_ fragile, she's probably not gonna make it! What does everybody think I'm gonna do? I'm sad, okay? I just lost my _best friend_, I'm not going to be like, jumping around and partying and acting like nothing happened!"

"Of course not," Felix said in what he probably meant to be a soothing tone. "No one thinks—"

Tears came to her eyes and she didn't know if they were angry or sad. Probably some combination of both. "Then why do you all keep coming by to 'check up on me?' You're _not _going to be the one to turn everything around for me, okay? It's not going to happen! I keep hearing about how like, time heals all wounds, or whatever, but then you act like cooking me dinner or asking me to get a root beer or something is going to magically make me feel better. Newflash: nothing is _ever _going to make me feel better!"

The lump in her throat that had been growing during this speech finally caught up with her and overwhelmed her ability to speak, and she put her elbows on the table and covered her face with her hands. She couldn't stop herself from crying. Of course she couldn't. It was all she did.

"I don't understand how I'm supposed to stop feeling like this," she said in defeat, her hair hanging in curtains over her face. "Is this just—just the way it's going to be for the rest of my life?"

A chair scraped back and suddenly Taffyta felt arms around her. She didn't want it to be comforting but it was, and with a whimper, she leaned into Calhoun. There was a long moment of silence while the other woman held her and stroked her hair slowly. Then, eventually, Calhoun said quietly, "Honey, I know it's not exactly the same thing, but I lost someone once, too."

Taffyta raised her eyes a little, peering through her hair at Calhoun. With a sniffle, she asked, "You—you did?"

With a nod, Calhoun replied, "Sure did, soldier. I was engaged to someone else once."

Raising her head and looking at Calhoun in surprise, Taffyta said, "You were? But what about Felix?"

Felix put a comforting hand on Calhoun's shoulder and said, "Oh, this was a long time before we met. A whole mess of years."

She smiled at him, then turned back to Taffyta. "His name was Brad. We met in the Space Corps, but on our wedding day—" For a moment, she had to stop and gather herself. Taffyta stared. Calhoun seemed so tough all the time, she never in a million years would have thought the other woman could be sad, like…well, like a normal person. "A Cy-bug got him on our wedding day, and it took me a long, long time to work through that."

Taffyta clapped her hands over her mouth. "Oh my god, that's…that's horrible, Tamora."

With a nod, Calhoun said, a bleakness in her tone that Taffyta hadn't ever heard before, "It was tough. I'm not going to lie to you, Taffyta, losing someone you love, no matter how you love them, that's never going to be anything but tough. There's no magic fix. That was the hardest thing for me. When you're used to solving all your problems with a plasma rifle, that kind of emotional stuff, it's…well, it doesn't come easy."

Looking back down at her lap, Taffyta said quietly, "I wish I could just turn it off."

"So did I."

She twined her fingers together in her lap. "I guess that's why I've been putting so much into racing. I mean, even more than usual. It's the only time I can feel something besides sad." Saying this, putting it into words to other people, and to someone who understood what she was going through, felt freeing.

Squeezing her shoulder, Calhoun said, "I know. It's probably going to be that way for a long time. But you know we're always here for you whenever you need us."

"And even when you think you don't need us," Felix added with a smile.

Taffyta managed to crack a small smile back at him. "I wish your hammer could fix all of this. Or any of it."

He looked sad. How many times must he have thought that through the years, about all sorts of different things? What good was a magic hammer, really, when the only things it could fix were the things that didn't really matter? "Me too, kiddo," he said.

Standing back up, Calhoun said, "Now, how about you finish your dinner? Felix tells me you're eating candy all the time?"

This startled a watery laugh out of her. "Guilty, I guess," she said. "But I mean, I _do _live in _Sugar Rush_. Eating candy all the time is kind of just what we do."

"Maybe we need to see about getting regular deliveries of vegetables sent over there," Felix said, mock sternness in his tone.

Calhoun sat down in her chair again and pointed her spoon at Taffyta. "Otherwise, we're going to make you come over here for dinner once a week."

Taking another spoonful of chili, Taffyta said, "I mean, maybe that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world." The two of them looked delighted by this, and for the first time she was struck by how _they _must have felt. They'd taken the racers into their home, prepared to parent all fifteen of them (well, fourteen, since Vanellope had run off), and then, once _Sugar Rush _had been plugged back in, all of them had just gone back home. Felix and Calhoun hadn't had kids of their own since then. Taffyta didn't even know if that was possible. But it must have been pretty bittersweet to see all your sort-of-kids suddenly grown up and not needing you anymore.

Though, Taffyta _did _need them, didn't she? Even if she wasn't going to say it out loud.

Once dinner was over, she headed back to _Sugar Rush_. Game Central Station was busy as she walked through it, bustling with characters talking and laughing. A couple _Madden _players were tossing a football around, and a group of _Hero's Duty _soldiers were having a shouted conversation as they jogged in a circuit around the hall. Paperboy was doing tricks on his bike, entertaining a few _Sugar Rush _NPCs. Everyone was so happy. Everything was…normal. And she felt disconnected from all of it, walking along in her own lonely bubble. She didn't know if she was unable or just unwilling to penetrate it.

It was weird how something as simple as walking didn't come naturally in her new body. At least after two weeks, it felt more like her own, but she still wasn't used to the length of her stride or the size of her feet. Plus her arms kept banging her hips. She wasn't used to those being there.

Suddenly, someone whistled at her, shrill and sharp and unpleasant. No, it wasn't just a whistle. Someone _wolf-whistled _at her. She stopped dead in her tracks and tried to spot where it was coming from. After a second, her eyes landed on Ken from _Street Fighter_, elbowing Zangief and pointing at her.

Taffyta turned bright red and looked at the ground, hurrying away. She may have only been twenty-five for two weeks, but she knew what _that _meant, and she didn't like it one bit. To his credit, Zangief batted Ken's arm down and glared at him, but it didn't do much to assuage Taffyta's mortification. Was this how guys were going to treat her now?

To her relief, she made it back to the _Sugar Rush _outlet without further incident. If _that _was the kind of thing she was going to have to put up with, she wasn't interested in ever coming out to Game Central Station again. With a sigh, she climbed into her kart and sat there for a moment, her chest hurting and every part of her just…tired. She was tired of feeling like she didn't know her own body anymore, but most of all, she was tired of feeling sad, and tired of knowing that she was _always _going to feel sad. It wasn't fair that it could hurt this much to lose someone.

Sighing again, she started her kart and steered into the tunnel that would bring her home. Once back inside _Sugar Rush_, she began her usual circuit of the whole game, eventually ending up in the Candy Cane Forest. It wasn't one of her favorite places. She didn't like the taffy swamps, possibly because Swizzle had gone through a period of calling her Taffy Swamp to tease her, a name which she hadn't found particularly funny but everyone else had. At least until she reminded them who was queen bee of the game, _then_ they'd stopped laughing.

But she hadn't really explored it since the upgrade. That was probably a good enough reason to check it out.

The road through the forest was in way worse repair than it had been before the upgrade, but there were also parts of it with guardrails, as well as a couple jumps. Maybe this had been meant to be a new track and had then been abandoned. Well, none of them were really missing out on much. The view was boring, the terrain was a snooze-fest, and—

Pink Lightning's front tire hit a pothole and stuck. "What the—?" Taffyta muttered. She jammed down on the accelerator and her kart's wheels spun, then sank into the road several inches. "Ugh, you _have _to be kidding me!" she said, getting out. Her shoes squelched as she circled her kart, inspecting the hole she'd managed to get herself trapped in. After several seconds, Pink Lightning rose again to the surface of the road. Another part of that half-finished track—an obnoxious hazard to slow you down.

Well, now that she knew about it, she had to admit it was pretty good. If there was ever another update and they finished this track, she'd be the only one to know about it. That made her smile a little.

She put a hand on the side of her kart, about to jump back inside, when she heard a—well, a noise.

That was the only way she could describe it, even though it _wasn't _really a noise. It was something…different. Something weirdly sub-sonic and ultra-sonic at the same time, something at the edge of both her hearing and senses. Slowly, she turned around, trying to figure out where it was coming from. That was, if there was even an _it _to come from somewhere. Her eyes scanned the forest. Nothing. Was she imagining it? She couldn't hear it anymore. Well, she'd never really been able to _hear _it. But it seemed like it was gone now.

Then it came back. Taffyta whipped her head around to face in the direction she somehow knew it was coming from. Ugh, of course. She made a face, then stepped off the road into the taffy swamp.

Immediately, she sank in up to her knees. She groaned and twisted her face in revulsion again, but she pulled one leg out with a thick squelch and took a step. The sound pulled her onward until, breathing heavily, she reached the place where it seemed loudest. Or—strongest? There was nothing there, though.

Taffyta looked around. Whatever it was _had _to be coming from around here somewhere. No way had she walked through this disgusting swamp only to not find anything.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of light. She slogged in that direction, stumbling out of the swamp onto a dry island. Gross, her legs were totally caked in taffy. Wrinkling her nose, she glanced around again, and then—there! There was that flash of light again. There was one tree growing on the island, forked at the bottom into two trunks. She covered the distance to it and knelt down, the taffy on her legs instantly glueing her to the ground. At the bottom of the trunk, where the stripes should have been, there was a glitching, gridded space. Purple, blue, and pink light was pulsing out of it and its borders were indistinct and constantly shifting. Below the gridded surface was blackness.

For several moments, Taffyta just watched the space, mesmerized. What was she looking at? The candy cane tree was all there like normal, but then, suddenly, it just stopped, and there was this glitchy looking hole in the middle of it. She peered into the hole, but all she could see was the blue grid over the surface.

She reached out a hand, then stopped. _What are you doing, don't _touch _it! _What a stupid thing to do. She didn't know what she was looking at or what this was.

Oh well. With a shrug, she put her hand on the gridded blackness.

There was a garbling sound as she glitched, and when she looked down at herself, her entire body had dissolved into blue binary.

She withdrew her hand. So yeah. This must be the game's exposed code. Whoever had worked on this section of the game hadn't done a very good job patching it up when they'd decided not to finish the track.

Then her hand flickered and she glanced down at it, startled. Binary was scrolling across her palm.

For a moment she watched it, transfixed. She'd never seen anything like it before, not any of the times she'd glitched through contact with Vanellope or King Candy. When that had happened, as soon as she'd stopped touching them, the glitching had stopped too. But this just kept going, despite the fact that she wasn't in contact with the exposed code anymore. Then, slowly, as she watched, the binary faded.

She stayed kneeling there, staring at her hand. Without thinking, she reached out and touched the exposed code again. The same binary appeared on her hand, scrolling across in a repeating line of code.

Wait. Why was there one line of binary repeating on her hand? She'd seen her own code, and she didn't remember this part. Only then did it occur to her that she needed to write this down. Frantically, she looked around for something to write on and immediately felt stupid. Something to write on? Like what, she kept a pen and paper with her while she raced?

She spotted the lowest branch of the candy cane tree. That would work. She jumped straight up in the air, the taffy on her legs squelching, grabbed a twig from the larger branch, and broke it off. Then, staring at the fading binary on her hand, she wrote it down in the soft cocoa powder ground. When she was done, she rocked back, her knees folded underneath her.

01010011 01001111 01010011.

It repeated a few times, and then another, longer string of binary followed it. None of it meant anything to her. But she had a feeling, burgeoning in her heart, that it meant _something_. Something good—something possibly amazing.

She jumped to her feet and leapt back into the swamp to get back to her kart. _She _didn't know what it meant, but she knew there was someone in the arcade who would.


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

She'd almost hit six NPCs on her way back out to Game Central Station, but whatever—they should have known better than to walk on the road in a racing game. Or, okay, maybe just _near _the road, since she'd been swerving to pass Citrusella and Sticky when she'd almost taken out the group of her unsuspecting fans. They probably wouldn't hold it against her.

Anyway, she had someplace she needed to be. She rushed into Game Central Station, out of breath from her frantic slog through the taffy swamp and running from the _Sugar Rush _outlet into the main hall. Where _was _he? The _one _time she wanted to talk to that overcharged buzzkill, and he didn't show up to harass her about where she was coming from and going to and who she was with, and had anyone given her anything and had all of her belongings been with her the entire time, et cetera and ad nauseam. Taffyta stood still outside her game's outlet, standing on her toes to try to see. Her legs were still coated in green taffy, though it had dried now to a hard shell that flaked off as she walked. She was still drawing stares.

Then, two outlets over, she spotted a flash of blue and took off running. "Surge!" she yelled, hoping he didn't disappear. "Surge, I need to talk to you!" She skidded to a stop in front of him, practically falling over. Dammit, these stupid new legs! Also, dammit? Huh, apparently real profanity was in the wheelhouse now. Maybe there was something good about this upgrade, after all.

He looked at her, taking in her taffy-covered legs and disheveled hair, blinked, and adjusted his glasses. "Yes, Miss Muttonfudge, what can I do for you?" he asked in a bored tone.

Still trying to catch her breath, she pulled a notepad out of her jacket and shoved it towards him. She'd found the notepad in her house. Probably easier to bring the binary to Surge than the other way around. "You know some code. What is this? What does it mean?"

At this, he looked alarmed and pushed the notepad away from his face. Whoops, she might have hit him in the nose. Oh well. "I don't have time to go through lines of code with you," he said, already sounding irritated. Great.

"But—" she started.

"I'm far too busy, this upgrade has thrown the power draw of your game _totally _out of whack, I'm spending most of the day making sure it doesn't overload and black out the entire arcade." He turned to walk away. "Maybe in a few weeks—"

Taffyta made an animal noise of anger and grief and grabbed his arm, jerking him to a stop. "I need your help _now_. I need to know what this is, I think it might be—"

"Miss Muttonfudge." Surge's tone was gentler than she'd ever heard it. Carefully prying his arm out of her grip, he opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. His eyes roved over her face and his eyebrows drew together. Under his scrutiny, Taffyta suddenly felt something tight on her face. When she reached up to scratch at it, dried green taffy flaked away. Surge watched it fall to the ground. Then, he said, "I know how upset you must be."

Tears pricked at her eyes. Everyone kept saying that to her, but none of them _really _knew. "You have no idea how upset I am," she snapped, her voice shaking.

For a long moment, he kept looking at her. Then his shoulders sagged in a sigh. "Taffyta. I know this upgrade has been hard for you. It's been a lot to deal with. Everything's…" He gestured at her, making vague head to toe motions, then just finished, "…different. And obviously you and Turbo—you were very close to him, and—well, I'm sorry. But I think you need to accept…" At the look on her face, the tears that she felt slipping out of her eyes despite her best attempt to hold them in, Surge looked away. "Maybe there's someone you can talk to. Clyde, or…the other racers, they might be able to help…"

"Surge," she said, her voice breaking, right along with her heart. Then, she sucked in a deep breath, forced her tears back, and willed her voice to come out steady. "Please. I don't know enough coding and I need to know what this is. Can you just look? Five minutes. That's all. I know you're busy. I just—please."

She held the notepad out. For a long moment, he didn't take it, and it just hung in the air between them. But then, with an unintelligible mumble that sounded like, "Well, just five minutes," he took it from her. Moving his glasses closer to his eyes, he squinted at her scribbled binary. His eyes narrowed, and then his eyebrows shot up. Drawing it close to his shirt, almost like he didn't want anyone else seeing it, he said, "Can I borrow this?"

"Does that mean you're going to look at it?" she asked, wanting to sob with relief.

"Yes. But I don't have time right now. Can you meet me in _Tapper's _in an hour?"

Nodding vigorously, she said, "Yeah, of course—I totally can, that's fine, that's great, thank you, _thank you_, Surge, you don't know how much this means to me."

He looked at her, pocketing the notepad. "No, I think I do," he said. He took two strides away and then disappeared in a blur of blue electricity.

Taffyta sagged, telling herself not to get too hopeful but unable to help it. The next hour was going to take _forever_. What was she going to do to kill the time?

Scraping dried taffy off her tights killed some. Then, one complete circuit of Game Central Station took her ten more minutes. Was she walking fast? It should have taken longer. Shouldn't it have? So she did another, hoping it would eat up more of the hour. Nope, ten minutes again, and then, since she spotted Ken on the other side of the station, she ducked into the _Tapper's _outlet, despite the fact that she was going to be over thirty minutes early. Whatever. She'd have a few root beers. She wished she could have something stronger.

Huh, how weird. Even though she'd never had alcohol in her entire life, she knew exactly what it felt like to be drunk. Programming was kind of crazy.

Once she arrived at _Tapper's_, she slid onto a barstool. No one else from _Sugar Rush _was there. Maybe that was a good thing. If she didn't get the news she was hoping to hear—the insane, impossible news—then at least only people from outside her game would see her turn into a blubbering mess yet again. Her fellow racers had seen enough of that over the past two weeks.

"What can I get for you, Taffyta?" Tapper asked, looking up as he wiped out a mug.

"Just a root beer," she said, leaning her elbows on the bar.

After a second, he put one down in front of her. She reached into her pocket to pull out some money, but he held a hand out. "Uh uh. It's on the house."

"No, seriously, I can pay," she objected.

Tapper smiled kindly at her. "I know you can, sweetheart."

Before she could argue further, he walked away to deliver a drink to another patron. Taffyta wrapped her hands around the mug and sipped at it, feeling a little disgruntled about the clear show of pity. At least Tapper had given her the free root beer and left her alone.

She watched the bubbles in the root beer's foam slowly popping. Maybe she could make a game out of how long she could nurse a single mug of the stuff. Yeah, that sounded _real _fun. Maybe she could count cracks in the ceiling. Or maybe Surge would be early.

Three root beers later, and she could feel all that liquid sloshing around in her stomach. It turned out that she wasn't very good at making root beer last and that it wasn't a very entertaining game after all. She stifled a burp and looked at the clock, then brightened. It had been an hour! Surge would be here any second.

"All grown up, huh, Blondie?"

Taffyta stiffened at the voice—at the smoothness that _almost _hid the sneer underneath it. For a second, she just sat, staring at the back of the bar, fingers clenched around her drink. What was taking Surge so long to get here? Wasn't he supposed to be, like, a rule follower? Didn't that mean being punctual? But _no_, he was late, and now she had to deal with, well, _this_.

She turned her head and met the stare of someone she thought she'd never see again. Someone, for that matter, who she'd never _wanted _to see again.

"Malcolm," she said coolly.

He looked the same as he had the last time she'd seen him seven years ago. Same cocky smile, same tanned face, same spiked, bleach-blond hair. How had she ever been taken in by this guy? Three months after Vanellope had taken her place as the rightful ruler of _Sugar Rush_, Taffyta had gone Turbo and met Malcolm in this very bar. He'd brought her to _Extreme EZ Living 2 _on Litwak's computer, promising her that she'd be able to forget all her bad memories. All her sadness and anger. All she'd gotten was a virus that had almost killed her, and later, almost destroyed _Sugar Rush_.

At least she'd learned her lesson about magic fixes.

There was a leer on his face as his eyes raked down her body, lingering on her chest and hips, and it made her feel disgusting. Pulling her jacket around herself—not that it did anything to cover up her legs—she said, "Leave me alone."

Of course he didn't move. Taking a flask out of his pocket and swigging out of it, he wiped his mouth with his hand and said, "So, I hear I should give you my condolences. Old Turbo finally bit the dust, huh?"

"Shut up," she said through gritted teeth.

Malcolm grinned. "Did I hit a nerve there, Blondie? The funny thing is, as I recall, the whole reason you and I did business way back in '12 was because you had a big problem with the guy. Guess things change."

Her chest tight with anger, she said, "Did you want something or are you just here to bother people?"

"Maybe I'm just here to grab a drink," he said, giving her a smile that made her skin crawl. "Saw you here, all on your lonesome, and figured there's no reason for either of us to be drinking alone."

Glaring at him, she said, "I'm meeting someone, for your information."

His eyes traveled down her body again. Gross, gross, _gross_. "So what's your deal, Blondie?"

"My _deal _is that I don't want to talk to you. Go away."

"I thought you'd be pretty thrilled with your little update. New tracks, new body, what's not to like?"

_Everything. _The new tracks were—okay, so fine, the new tracks were great. She didn't take enjoyment out of much these days but getting to race somewhere she hadn't raced a million times before was definitely a bright spot. As for the new body, there was nothing to like. All it meant was clumsiness and guys being creepy to her.

"Oh yeah, that's right. Your buddy Turbo's pushing up daisies. Or wherever all those little ones and zeroes end up."

Furious tears stung her eyes. She wished Tapper would notice Malcolm harassing her. She wished Surge would hurry up and get here. She wished she could dump the entire contents of her mug over this asshole's head. Instead, she slid off the barstool and started to stalk away.

"Was it something I said?" Malcolm asked, that creepy smile still on his face. When she just glared at him, he added, "Maybe the first DLC pack for _Sugar Rush _will include a better personality for you."

Despite herself, she turned around to glare at him. "What are you talking about? What's DLC?"

"_DownLoad_able _Con_tent, Blondie. Your game's got that fancy Wi-Fi hookup now and from what I hear, your new parent company's got some stuff in the pipeline."

She stared at him. He had to be making this up. Right? Of course he was. What did he know? Nothing. He was just a jerk who was tormenting her for no reason, because that was what he did—he screwed with people. The idea of _more _upgrades, or changes, or whatever coming, exhausted her rather than upset her. It wasn't like it could make anything worse.

But she wasn't going to take the bait. "Don't talk to me anymore," she said coldly, with an imperious tilt to her chin. He just laughed at her as she turned away, her hair whipping around her face.

At that moment though, Surge walked into the bar. Taffyta instantly forgot about Malcolm, who hadn't been worth her time in the first place. She rushed over and asked breathlessly, "So? Did you look at it?"

For a long moment, Surge just stared at her. She felt her hope flickering out. Well, it had been stupid to have any in the first place.

"Yes," Surge said. "Let's sit down."

With a tight nod, she followed him to a seat, far away, luckily, from Malcolm. Her heart was pounding as she hopped onto the barstool. Was Surge's expression happy? Sad? Neither? Even if she could figure out what emotion she was seeing, what would any of it mean? She barely knew Surge. He'd always been an uptight grown-up to her who seemed to exist only to make life less fun. Now she appreciated more she ever had that he was there to keep all of them safe. Maybe if he'd known about the upgrade, _he _could have done something to help King Candy.

Surge pulled the notepad out and set it on the table between them. "Where did you see this?"

She took a deep breath, willing her heart to stop pounding so hard. Yeah right. This was kind of the moment of truth, wasn't it? "It looked like…like an unfinished track or something."

"This was in _Sugar Rush_?"

"Oh, er, yeah." Wasn't that obvious? "I was driving around and I found this place where like, the code was exposed? So I touched it—" Surge looked horrified, big surprise. "—and then I glitched, but then after I went back to normal, all that code kept scrolling on my hand for another few seconds." She took a deep breath but couldn't seem to fill her lungs. "So do you know what it is?"

He looked deep in thought and didn't say anything for a long moment. "Do you recognize this?" he finally asked, pointing at several lines of binary.

"I—" Her throat and mouth were dry. She swallowed. "I—maybe. I thought it…looked familiar." How could it not? She'd been seeing it for the past seven years, flashes of glitchy red, flickers of code, that she'd never realized she'd memorized until she'd seen it there in the taffy swamp.

"Well, so did I," Surge said. He pulled his pen out of his breast pocket, clicked it open and closed a few times, and then lightly underlined a hundred or so of the characters that she'd written down. "I had to make sure, though. Do you remember seven years ago, after _Sugar Rush _reset, I installed alarms on all the games in the arcade?"

"Yeah," she said. Of course she remembered. When the virus Malcolm had given her had spread and almost destroyed the whole game, Vanellope had promised King Candy that if he fixed the code, she'd let him out of the fungeon, where she'd been keeping him for the previous three months. Then she'd turned around and had Surge put an alarm on every single game, using a—well, Vanellope had called it a digital fingerprint. A snapshot of his code.

Surge was staring at the notepad. "I used the most basic binary strings in his code. The 8-bit ones. To make sure he couldn't code over anything and trick the alarms."

Taffyta realized she was leaning forward and clenching her fingers around the table top so hard that it hurt. Had Surge always been such a drama queen? Why couldn't he just get to the point?

There was a crash and a roar of voices off to one side of the bar and Taffyta jumped, startled. Surge perked up, staring towards the disruption, but then he slumped down again and said, "Someone dropped a glass."

She wanted to scream, but instead she just nodded tightly. "What were you saying about King Candy's code?"

For a moment, he looked at her like she was speaking a different language. Then, he blinked and adjusted his glasses. "Oh, yes. That."

_That?!_ Taffyta took a deep breath. Several deep breaths. Surge was staring at the notepad again, his eyes focused on the binary he'd underlined. Then, he looked at her and met her eyes. "This is Turbo's code. It matches what I used on the alarms exactly."

She swallowed, feeling hope bleeding out of her. "What are you saying, that this is just, like, some kind of holdover from your alarm?"

"Oh, no. No, not at all." He laughed a little and she just stared at him flatly. Surge cleared his throat. "That's just a marker. Bracketing, you could say. The important part is these repeating lines, here." He tapped his pen on the repeating strings of 01010011 01001111 01010011 and went on, "_This_, I think, is a message. It says SOS."

All the air and noise in the bar seemed to get sucked out instantaneously, leaving her breathless in a silent vacuum. Then, with a punch of pressure and sound, it all came rushing back. She realized her mouth was hanging open and she shut it. Swallowing hard, she tried to speak, but all that came out was a strangled, hoarse sound.

But Surge didn't seem to need her to ask what she was trying to get out. "Yes, Miss Muttonfudge," he said quietly. "I think he's still alive."

"How?" she whispered. It was the only word she could make come out of her mouth. Her brain didn't seem to be working. Her whole body, actually, seemed like it was suddenly malfunctioning. The moment seemed like it was made of glass, like she was staring through a thin sheet of hard candy at a scene where the lighting and sound wasn't quite right, where shecouldn't see or hear right, but she didn't dare move for fear something would break, shatter, and destroy the sliver of guttering hope that had appeared.

He sighed and fingered the rim of his glasses. "I don't know. Only he could tell you. I'm guessing whatever's left of him is confined to the code vault."

Those words galvanized her and it was like a bolt of electricity shot through her. Grabbing at his arm, Taffyta said, "Surge, you have to help me, I don't know enough, but you're like, well, I guess you're probably the next best person at coding in the arcade after King Candy, if you come with me now we can go in and you can fix it and he'll be back—"

But Surge was already shaking his head. "Weren't you listening before? I have to figure out a way to stabilize the amount of power _Sugar Rush _is drawing. If I don't, it could blow out this entire place. We might _all _end up six pixels under. I can't." As her face crumpled, he said, "I'm sorry, Taffyta. I really am. In a few days, maybe—"

"I can't wait a few days, what if his code is like…" She cast around for a word. "…like, decaying, or something?"

Surge shrugged and stood up. "Then it looks like it's up to you to figure it out." Sliding the notepad across the bar to her he said, "Good luck. I mean that."

And then he disappeared into a blur of buzzing blue energy, zipping out of the bar in less time than it took to blink. The lights flickered and Tapper glanced over at the spot Surge had vanished from, huffed, and said, "If I've told him once, I've told him a hundred times, I hate it when he does that in here!"

But Taffyta barely heard him. She picked the notepad up and hugged it to herself, then walked out of the bar in a daze. She must have taken the clunky little train back to Game Central Station, only because it seemed like she got there too quickly to have walked the whole way. But it was possible, because time seemed weird, it seemed not to be working the way it was supposed to. Jubileena and Snowanna walked by, waving and smiling and asking if she wanted to go to _Tapper's_, but all Taffyta could do was shake her head. They wouldn't be surprised, she'd done nothing but refuse to socialize all week.

Her brain had filled with buzzing, growing louder and louder, while she'd made her way back to Game Central Station. But suddenly, it cleared, and Taffyta put a hand to her mouth, then started to run, slowly at first, then as fast as she could, back to _Sugar Rush's _outlet. She needed to get back to her game—she needed to get into that code vault.

She reached the outlet and slid to a stop, throwing out a hand to grab Pink Lightning and keep herself from falling over. For a moment, she stood there, catching her breath, and then she started to climb into her kart.

But then she stopped as it all hit her in a rush, like a Sweet Seeker smashing into her and wiping her out on the track.

King Candy was _alive_.

Something hitched in her throat and she couldn't breathe. And then she was crying, but for once it was out of happiness—pure, rushing happiness coursing through her, and her body didn't know what else to do with it except release it with tears. She sank to her knees next to her kart, one hand still on the door, and sobbed.

An NPC trundled in and looked at her in alarm. Taffyta wiped at her face, smearing tears across it, and started to laugh. This seemed to alarm the NPC more. Okay, so maybe she looked a bit nuts. She didn't care. Her body seemed too small to contain her heart, ballooning with joy and hope for the first time since the upgrade.

King Candy was alive, and Taffyta was going to save him.


	6. Chapter 6

Author's note: The formatting seems to be wonky in FFN's doc manager, so if the line break isn't showing up halfway through this chapter and there's an abrupt scene change, that's why!

CHAPTER 6

The arcade opened in an hour. That felt like plenty of time to get inside the code vault and maybe even figure out how to bring King Candy back. He obviously had some way to communicate, maybe he'd even be able to talk to her! Yeah, at this rate, they'd be having lunch together between quarter alerts.

Taffyta crouched lower over the steering wheel and took the turns on the road leading up to Sugar Rush Castle as fast as she safely could. It would just waste time if she went sailing off the road right now—this wasn't a race and there'd be no floating marshmallow to lift her back up. So even though she wanted to hold her foot down on the gas and throw caution to the wind, she restrained herself. When she got there, she screeched to a stop and jumped out of her kart, yanking her helmet off her head and chucking it onto the seat.

With a heave, she pulled the castle doors open, stumbling back as one side swung wide with a loud creak. Then she hurried into the throne room, calling, "Hello? Anyone here? Hey, I have to get into the code vault, can someone let me in?"

An Oreo guard appeared from around the back of the throne, rubbing at his eyes. Sleeping on the job. Nice. "What are you yelling about?" he asked with a yawn.

Taffyta planted her hands on her hips. "I need to go into the code vault. I don't know the code, so can you let me in?" Belatedly, she added, "Please?"

"No," the Oreo guard said shortly, then turned away to go back to his nap.

Her mouth fell open. She hadn't expected such a blunt refusal. "But—"

"No," the guard repeated, walking away. "It isn't negotiable."

She stood rooted to the spot for a moment, but then she rushed after him. Growing frantic, she said, "You don't understand, I have to go in there—"

The Oreo guard stopped walking and looked at her sternly. "No. There's no unauthorized personnel allowed."

"Okay, well how do I _get _to be authorized personnel?" she demanded.

"Talk to President von Schweetz."

"Um, I _can't _talk to Vanellope. If you haven't noticed, she ditched all of us!"

This had probably been the wrong thing to say. The castle guards were still loyal to Vanellope, even though she wasn't around. They didn't like hearing anyone say anything bad about her, even when she totally deserved it. Why wouldn't people just admit that what Vanellope had done to _Sugar Rush _was just as bad as what Turbo had done to _TurboTime _and _RoadBlasters_? At least Turbo had had a good reason. Vanellope had just been bored. She'd almost gotten all of them killed because she'd been _bored_. And then she hadn't even stuck around to apologize, she'd just up and left!

It made Taffyta's blood boil, but right now it was just a distraction. "I can't wait until she comes back and I don't have time to go through Surge's stupid internet visa application to go talk to her. Can't you just, like, make an exception? Just this once?"

The guard rolled his eyes, and that made Taffyta clench her fists at her sides. Who did this chump think he was? Sure, she may have been a sad sack—a particularly soggy one—for the past two weeks, but she was still _Taffyta Muttonfudge_, and no one treated her like that. She stood up straight, threw her shoulders back, and tilted her chin imperiously at him. "If you don't tell me how to get in there, I'll make sure Vanellope hears about how you were throwing your weight around just because she's not here."

The guard narrowed his eyes, thinking about this. Then, he planted his spear on the sugar tiled floor and asked, "Why would _you _need access to the code vault?"

"None of your business." She glared at him.

Fingering his spear, the guard finally said, "I can't let you in." As Taffyta sucked in a breath to let him have it, he went on, "You'll have to talk to Wreck-It Ralph."

This brought Taffyta up short. "Huh?"

"Wreck-It Ralph. From _Fix-It Felix Jr.—_"

"Yeah, thanks, I know who Ralph is," Taffyta snapped, rolling her eyes. "What does he have to do with anything?" But even as she asked the question, she thought she understood.

The guard looked unfazed by her sarcasm. "President von Schweetz left Wreck-It Ralph in charge of _Sugar Rush's _code vault. When she isn't here—"

"Which is ninety-nine percent of the time," Taffyta muttered.

"—all decisions regarding access to the code vault go through him."

Taffyta narrowed her eyes at him. Well, Ralph had really kept _that_ quiet, hadn't he? "So," she said slowly, "all I need to do is get Ralph to agree to it, and you'll let me in?"

The guard shifted on his feet. "He'll need to come here. He's the only one with the password to get in."

Blowing a piece of hair out of her face, she said, "Fine. I'll see you soon."

She turned to walk away, but the guard yelled, "Hold on!" When she turned around, he said, "Aren't you on the roster? You can't go in the code vault now."

Taffyta cocked her hip and put her hand on it, raising her eyebrows. She felt like all her swagger and confidence had come rushing back in the past forty-five minutes. "Let me worry about that, buster. Why don't you just go back to your nap."

As she whirled around, she caught the look on the guard's face, comically dismayed and befuddled, and she smiled. Time to make her second visit to _Fix-It Felix Jr. _of the night.

* * *

Taffyta tried to look casual as she strolled across Game Central Station while the station-wide announcement blared in the background, "_Attention. Attention. The arcade will open in five minutes. Please report to your games._" While she wasn't about to break any _explicit _rules, she also knew that what she was doing was frowned upon. It wasn't a big deal though—she'd found someone to cover for her on the roster today (Sticky had been delighted, after all, she didn't make it into the top nine too often) and she knew to keep her head down if you were in another game during arcade hours.

If Surge saw her out there, he'd definitely be suspicious. Back in the early days of Vanellope's…er, reign? Presidency? Anyway, back when _Sugar Rush _had reset and the roster had been chosen randomly each night, Taffyta and King Candy had been regular fixtures out in Game Central Station. Even after Vanellope had re-instituted the Random Roster Race, Taffyta would occasionally take a day off to hang out with King Candy on one of his off-roster days. One of Vanellope's conditions of allowing him to race again had been that he couldn't ever be on the roster at the same time as her, and that meant he only raced twice a week.

But ever since Vanellope had left, Taffyta and King Candy had both been on the roster practically every day, which meant that her presence out there would arouse suspicion.

Even though she _totally _wasn't doing anything wrong.

Surge was nowhere to be seen, though. Hopefully he was still wrapped up trying to handle the electrical flow to _Sugar Rush. _She booked it to her destination anyway. It was hard not to look over her shoulder the entire time, but she knew if she did it would make it look like she actually _was _up to something. Which she wasn't.

Luckily, the characters that were still out in the station were too focused on rushing back to their own games to pay any attention to her. She reached the outlet for _Fix-It Felix Jr. _without incident and slipped inside, then groaned. The train wasn't there. Ugh, well, of course it wasn't—it was probably on its way back to the game right now. She punched the call button and waited, her arms crossed over her chest while she tapped her foot impatiently and waited.

"_Attention. Attention. The arcade is now open. Report to your games immediately_," droned in the background. Taffyta moved to the side of the station so anyone walking by wouldn't be able to see her.

The train felt like it took _forever _to arrive, but finally it did, and she hopped in, willing the clunky little thing to go faster. She watched the dark tunnel walls pass, her mind racing as fast as her heart, wondering what she'd find in the code vault and how she was going to figure out how to fix King Candy's code. Now that the initial explosion of joy had passed, she realized that her beginner coding skills weren't going to be enough. She needed to be able to talk to him because she was going to need his help. But how?

She shook herself. One thing at a time. First she needed to get inside the code vault and _find _his code. Considering she'd never been in any code vault ever, just peeked inside _Sugar Rush's _once, that was going to be enough of a challenge.

For now, it was enough to know that he was _alive_. She still couldn't quite believe it, and her heart gave an almost painful pound of happiness as her sternum ached in a combination of relief and joy.

Finally, the train reached the station in _Fix-It Felix Jr. _and Taffyta got out cautiously, just in case there was a gamer playing. Everything was quiet though, except for some merengue music drifting out of one of the Nicelander's apartments. Taffyta glanced up towards the game's screen, didn't see anyone approaching, and darted across the front lawn of the Niceland Apartments towards the dump where Ralph still lived.

"Ralph?" she called nervously. _He _wouldn't be mad about her coming by, would he? It would be pretty hypocritical if he was, considering his role in getting _Sugar Rush _unplugged the previous year, but you never knew. And she needed him to _not _be mad at her, since saving King Candy depending entirely on her getting into the code vault. "Hello?" she said, clambering up the pile of bricks. Yuck, she still couldn't believe he lived here.

Just as she was about to give up and go look for him elsewhere in the game, he stuck his head out the door of his house and said, "Taffyta? What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be racing?"

"Ralph, King Candy's still alive," she said in a rush, clasping her hands in front of her. "And I need to go into the code vault because his code is like, messed up or something, so someone has to fix it, but I tried to get the Oreo guard to let me in and he wouldn't and he told me _you're _the one who has the say on who goes in and I'm sorry I came during arcade hours but I didn't want to wait until tonight and can I please please _please _go into the code vault?"

"Whoa." Ralph took a step back and bumped into his house, causing half of it to collapse. "Whoops, I'll fix that later—maybe get Felix to fix it, actually. But slow down, kid. Did you say King Candy's _alive?_"

"_Yes_, and I need to get into the code vault!" she said. Wasn't he _listening?_

At that moment, proving that the universe had the _worst _sense of timing ever, a quarter alert flashed overhead. Ralph glanced up at it and said, "Hold that thought, okay? I'll be right back."

She grit her teeth and clenched her fists, but she knew there was nothing to do but wait until game over. Or until the gamer ran out of quarters. Burying her face in her hands, she just hoped the gamer wasn't any good, and also that they were broke.

While Ralph worked, Taffyta paced back and forth in front of his house, looking up every so often to watch. She'd never been in another game during arcade hours. Her mouth dropped open as she watched Ralph smash a window, grab a Nicelander, and hurl them out of the building. Geez, no wonder people were scared of him. Felix hopped from windowsill to windowsill, repairing the damage Ralph did.

Taffyta sniffed. This was a weird game.

When the gamer lost, she perked up, but then another quarter alert immediately popped up and she groaned. But this time, when the gamer lost, there wasn't another one, and Ralph strode back over to her. "So, are you feeling all right, Muttonchops?"

"What? Yes!"

"You sure? No fever? You didn't drink anything that a stranger gave you?"

Batting his hand away from her forehead, she said, "No! Ralph, come on, I'm not crazy!"

Ralph rubbed his forehead with his fingers. "Look, Taffyta, I know this whole thing has been a pretty big shock—"

"Ralph, do _not _patronize me," she snapped. He looked taken aback. She was a little taken aback herself. She wasn't sure she'd even known that word two weeks ago. "I'm not crazy and I'm not sick. I talked to Surge, he was the one who told me…look, it's kind of a long story, but can you just believe me? I'm _sure _King Candy's still alive in there, and if there's even a _chance_, shouldn't you let me go check?"

For a long moment, Ralph stared down at her in silence, his hands on his hips. Taffyta's heart moved from her chest into her throat. Was it possible that he'd deny her access to the code vault? Surely he knew she could be trusted. Didn't he? But then, at first, Ralph had hated her because of the way she'd treated Vanellope back when King Candy had still been ruling _Sugar Rush_. Maybe he still hadn't forgotten that. Well, of course he hadn't forgotten, no one had _forgotten_, but maybe he hadn't even really forgiven her. Maybe he was just like most of the characters in the arcade, thinking she wasn't much better than Turbo himself.

Then her code turned to ice. Was it possible that Ralph thought this whole thing was an elaborate ruse? Taffyta and King Candy _had _come up with a plan to get into the code vault seven years ago, not to do anything sinister, but to alter the code (just a little!) in an attempt to make Vanellope hold the Random Roster Race again every day, instead of relying on a randomizer to select the day's roster. In retrospect, it hadn't been one of their finer moments. But in the end, King Candy hadn't gone through with it. She'd always thought that counted for something.

Maybe she'd just _hoped _it had counted for something.

"Taffyta—" he began.

"This isn't a trick," she said desperately. "You know that. You _know _I thought that—that he was gone. And I don't even know what I'm going to find in there, he might—" She stopped, swallowing the lump that suddenly rose in her throat. The truth was she might find that he _wasn't _still alive, that the code she'd seen had some other explanation. But she didn't think so. She had a feeling, deep down in every single byte of her code, that he was in there and he just needed someone to help him.

Ralph ran a hand through his hair. "Okay."

She sucked in a deep breath to argue, then realized what he'd said. "O—okay?" she stuttered. "Really?"

Looking troubled, he said, "Yeah, okay. But I'm gonna need some kind of…I don't know, proof. Assurance. Something so I know you're not in there messing stuff up."

She felt like she'd been sucker punched. Blinking back sudden tears, Taffyta said, "I wouldn't do that. I've never tried to do anything to hurt _Sugar Rush_."

"Yeah, I know _you _haven't, but—" Then, Ralph snorted. "Man, listen to me. Sorry, kid. Old habits. Turbo's hard to trust."

"I know that," she said quietly. It had been seven years. She'd learned to live with this truth. "But you don't have to trust him. You just have to trust me."

Ralph shook his head and smiled a little. "You know, Muttonchops," he said, his tone sort of sad, "you really seem like you've grown up a lot lately."

This startled a laugh out of her. "Oh, no kidding? I wonder what happened."

He chuckled and glanced up at the cabinet screen. Two teenagers were arguing over who was going to get to play first. "Hey, listen, let me play this next couple games, and then I'll see if I can get the guys from East Niceland to cover for me while we go over to _Sugar Rush_."

For a moment, Taffyta didn't know what to say. He'd do that? For _her_? Leave his game in the middle of the day to help? What did someone say to that? Especially someone like her, who really didn't deserve Ralph's friendship in the first place. When she realized the right words were _never _going to come to her, she just threw her arms around him. "Thanks, Ralph," she said, her voice muffled by his overalls.

He patted her back awkwardly. "No problem, kid. Now get outta here, okay? I'll meet you up at the castle as soon as I can."

After hugging him for another moment, she let go, tried to hide the fact that she was crying _again—_god, she really had to get this under control—and waved to him shyly before running off. The teenagers hadn't decided who was going to play first yet, so she bolted across the lawn to the train station. When she hopped into the train, she looked up and caught Felix's eye as he was fixing a few of the flowerbeds in front of the building. At his perplexed look, she just smiled. That made him look even _more _confused. She supposed she hadn't smiled genuinely in two weeks. She'd explain what was going on when she got the chance.

She had the advantage of her kart to travel back to _Sugar Rush_, so she waited for Ralph for way longer than she wanted to, pacing back and forth in front of the castle for what felt like hours. But Ralph finally arrived, huffing and puffing up the sparkling road. "Gotta get back as soon as I can," he said, putting his hands on his knees and wheezing for a second. "Q*bert and the guys are covering for me. So let's do this. C'mon, I'll talk to the guard."

Pulling open the castle doors like they were made of cotton candy, Ralph strode into the throne room. The Oreo guard that Taffyta had been arguing with earlier was still there and she made no attempt to hide the smug smile on her face as he started and stood to attention. "Taffyta here has the ol' Ralph seal of approval," Ralph said, sticking his thumb into his chest. "She can go into the code vault whenever she wants. Unrestricted access." The guard looked a little crestfallen. Taffyta smirked.

"Of course," the guard said, shuffling to the side. As they walked by, Taffyta managed to resist the urge to stick her tongue out. Huh, she really _had _grown up.

The two of them went to the back of the incomplete throne and Ralph pulled aside the curtain there, letting Taffyta go first. She found herself in a sterile hallway lined by glowing blue cables. At the other end was a circular door with a Nintendo controller set into it and eight red lights above it.

As they walked, Ralph pulled a piece of paper out of his overalls and said, "Let's see, the password's here somewhere…nope, not that…uh…shoot, I was sure it was this one…" Taffyta watched him nervously as he produced several more scraps of paper, but then he said, "Here we go!"

Letting the breath she'd been holding out in a explosive puff, Taffyta took the piece of paper from him. "This is it?" she asked.

"Should be. Give it a try."

Taffyta pressed her lips together, took a step forward, and tapped in the code on the controller: ↑ ↓ ← → A start.

There was a rapid beeping as the red lights flashed and turned green. With a clunk, the door rotated ninety degrees and sunk inwards before splitting in two and hissing open.

She took another step forward to peer inside. It had been seven years since the first and only time she'd seen the code vault, but it looked exactly the same as it did in her memory. Inside the doors was a cavernous black void, at the center of which was a tangled mass of glowing pink and purple. From this far away, it looked alive, like some kind of vining plant, the code boxes twinkling in the blackness like flowers opening. It was as beautiful as she remembered.

"You're gonna need this," Ralph said, making her jump. For a second, she'd forgotten he was there. When she turned around, he was holding out a rope of licorice. "You don't wanna get lost in there." As Taffyta shook her head in agreement, she took the rope and knotted it around her waist, and Ralph kept talking. "So listen, I can't stay, but do you want me to go get the guard to keep an eye on things and pull you back in when you're done?"

"No," Taffyta said. She tucked the piece of paper with the password into her jacket and took a deep breath. "I can handle it. I'll pull myself back out when I'm done."

Ralph chewed at his lip. "I dunno. What if that rope comes loose?"

Tugging on it, she said, "It won't. And I'll be careful. Seriously, Ralph, I don't need a babysitter. And check out these biceps," she added, flexing an arm. "I'm like, totally ripped. I don't need help pulling myself out."

He laughed. "Okay, okay. I'm still going to have him check on you if you're not out in a couple hours."

She opened her mouth to argue, then shut it. That was fair. Instead, she said, "Thanks, Ralph. Really. Thank you. This kind of means everything to me."

Waving a hand, he said, "Yeah, yeah. Don't worry about it. Just get in there and help your creepy little friend. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I kinda miss the twerp. Bickering with him keeps me on my toes."

Taffyta smiled and gave him one brief nod, then watched as he walked away, stooping to keep from scraping his head against the cables overhead. When he'd disappeared, she turned back to the open door. The twinkling code seemed to call to her.

She closed her eyes and took several slow, deep breaths. She could do this. She _had _to do this. King Candy was counting on her. No one else was coming.

She opened her eyes, zipped her jacket up, and stepped up onto the rim of the circular door. Peering into the blackness, she said, "Well, here goes."

With one more breath, she leapt into the code vault.


	7. Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

Taffyta knew she was going to float, because she'd seen King Candy do it seven years ago. Still, knowing that didn't prepare her for the terror of diving into black nothingness, not when she'd always been terrified of heights and falling. She _hated _that sensation, the loss of control and the complete consciousness before hitting the ground, the long second of knowing exactly what was going to happen to you and how much it was going to hurt. Except here there was no ground to hit, and so when she realized she was shrieking, several seconds after she'd jumped into the code vault, she clamped her mouth shut.

She wasn't falling. Whatever force was in effect in the vault caught her, and for a moment, she just floated there, kicking her feet and moving her hands like she was treading water. Treading air? It was a weird feeling. For a second, she chanced looking down—and instantly regretted it. Her gorge rose into her throat and she had to shut her eyes tightly. _Okay, don't do _that _again._

How was she supposed to move in here? Experimentally, she kicked her legs harder, and she began moving through the air. It really _did _feel like swimming, just easier. She added in some arm movement to help, and soon she was moving through the blackness, drawing closer and closer to the tangled mass of code. She reached the edge of it, where the code boxes were spread thinly and the glowing filaments connecting them were longer. But she stopped before going past the first boxes, hesitating.

The closer she'd gotten, the larger the game's code had loomed over her, and her task had seemed to go from daunting to impossible. How was she going to find his code in there? You could spend days floating around looking for the right box and _still _not find it. It had all looked so condensed from the doorway, but now she could see the density of boxes varied. Some were clustered together, but then there were vast empty spaces between those and the next cluster, with maybe one or two boxes to fill it, blinking forlornly. It was a huge space and there were thousands and thousands of boxes to comb through.

She realized her heart was hammering with nerves and she took a deep breath to try to calm it. And then, unbidden, a memory popped into her head, right from the beginning of her coding lessons with King Candy.

_She was frustrated, and just like, totally not getting it. And it was driving her _crazy _because he made it look so easy. But every time she tried to do anything, she'd get stuck, or she'd think she was doing everything perfectly but then it wouldn't work the way she wanted it to. "Ugh, what am I doing wrong?" she demanded, resisting the urge to fling the terminal they were working on across the room, instead slapping it down on the couch. Definitely not as satisfying._

_ King Candy picked it up. "No no, this is good. But look, you just want to move this bracket here, see, you have one too many, you want it outside this comma."_

_ He handed it back to her and she pouted. "It sounds so obvious when you do it. How did you ever teach yourself to do this, anyway?"_

_ Leaning back into the couch and pulling one leg up onto the cushion, he said, "Well, for startersth, I had a lot of time on my hands."_

_ "I'm serious."_

_ He grinned at her and unwillingly, she smiled back. "What, too flippant? It's true. But, okay, I suppose—well the thing is, after long enough hiding down there, I sort of started…I guessth it was like I could _hear _the code, you know?"_

_ Raising her eyebrows, Taffyta shook her head and said, "Um, no. How do you _hear _code? It's not like it talks."_

_ "Well, hoo-hoo, that's the thing, it does. Kind of, I mean, in a way—you know, you're looking at me like I'm totally crazy. You _do_ know that, right?"_

_ With a laugh, she said, "Yeah, I know, because I am! It _sounds _totally crazy."_

_ He pulled his other leg up onto the couch and sat crossed-legged, leaning forward intently. "Look, sometimes you just sort of have to…listen, I guess you could say, but it's not like…" He paused and waved a hand vaguely. "It's no substitute for actually _learning_, but you know, sometimes when I was stuck on something, it…helped." When she continued staring at him, her eyebrows raised to her hairline, he said, "I'm not explaining this very well, am I? Well, maybe it'sth—I suppose it's the sort of thing that doesn't explain very well."_

_ Taffyta picked up the terminal and stared at the code on its screen. "No, I think I get it. When you're like, really tuned into something, it's like it tells you what it needs." Glancing up at him, she said, "But this code's _definitely _not talking to me."_

_ Ruffling her hair, he grinned and said, "Give it time. Someday you'll sound _just _as crazy as me."_

Taffyta wrapped her arms around herself and drew in a deep, shaky breath. She missed him so much. If this didn't work…if he wasn't really here, or if she couldn't find him…

She didn't want to finish the thought. Maybe everyone else thought she'd been starting to accept King Candy's death, but they were wrong. The past couple hours, with the faint hope of his survival dangling there in front of her, felt like real life. The previous two weeks had felt like a nightmare.

But she had to _find him_. Licking her lips, she looked up at the vast tangle of code looming over her. Where would he be in there? Her eyes moved down the mass of code and she made the mistake of looking down again, which made her stomach churn and flip over. She straightened up and closed her eyes. Think. _Listen_.

She floated there in silence, straining to hear something. Anything. All she could hear, though, was a low, ambient hum, and all she felt was…well, silly. Opening her eyes, she kicked her feet a few times, bringing her closer to the code. The filaments strung between the boxes flickered around her, light sliding along them like blood through veins, and the boxes seemed to close around her, filling her vision with a kaleidoscope of purple and pink.

Vertigo clutched at her, and in a panic, she flailed for the licorice rope tied around her waist. She hadn't checked it once since she'd entered the code vault, what if it had come off?

Her fingers met nothing but air for several long, sickening moments, but then they closed around the rope, tied securely around her waist and leading out of the code, out of the black, and back to the real world.

King Candy might say that _this _was the real world. This was what made all of them…well, them. The thought made her feel dizzy.

Taking in another slow, deep breath, she moved further into the code, swimming slowly through the air. A large cluster of boxes and lines above her made her slow and kick up towards them, squinting so she could read the print underneath the symbol on all of them. "Jumbotron," she read out loud. She glanced at the other boxes surrounding it and realized they all had the same symbol on them, and underneath, the name of each one of _Sugar Rush's _tracks. Understanding dawned on her. Duh, the code was arranged so that similar things were together. So all the jumbotrons in the game were all tied together, and they were physically close to each other, right here.

She needed to find where the racers were.

Determination flooded through her and she headed for the center of the code, boxes flickering at the edges of her vision and snatches of words grabbing her attention before she moved on. _Something_ was pulling her towards the center of the code vault, and she knew, somehow, that she was on the right track.

And then, suddenly, a pink flash caught her eye. She stopped, staring at it in fascination. On it was a stylized drawing of a girl with a bobbed haircut and a strawberry hat. _Taffyta Muttonfudge_, the box said. Her mouth dropped open and she was hit with a weird, dissociative feeling as she floated there, staring at her own code box. It was like she could feel someone watching her, like she could feel herself watching _herself_, like looking in a funhouse mirror and seeing nothing but your own reflection over and over, reflected within itself until your mind folded over into crumples.

She shook her head and tore herself away. This place both creeped her out and thrilled her.

As she looked around, she spotted Jubileena, Rancis, Candlehead, and then—

Her heart stuttered, skipped several beats, and then found the right rhythm again. There, right in front of her, was King Candy's code box.

Taffyta almost started crying again, but she swiped the back of her hand across her nose and kicked over to it. Him. Unlike all the other boxes in the code vault, his was dark and lifeless, untethered to anything around it. The filaments waving from it looked like they'd been ripped free of whatever they'd been hooked into. Something was obviously wrong with it. Her stomach sloshed with queasiness. At least it was still here. She'd passed the code clusters for the weather and the day/night cycle and they were gargantuan, sending out tendrils that seemed to connect to everything else in the game, like some kind of creeping vine or fungus. Seeing that had brought home how fundamentally their game had changed.

But now that she was here, no lightning bolt hit her with a magic fix. She floated there, staring helplessly at his code. She had no idea what to do. Well, of _course _she had no idea what to do; she was able to do cosmetic changes, make modifications to go-karts, and she knew how to change a tire (admittedly totally useless, which he'd laughed about as he'd shown her; who was going to go to the code vault to fix a flat tire, after all, totally impractical). Oh, and she could code herself a clean house. Had she really thought she was going to get here and miraculously come up with the skills to fix whatever was wrong with him? They'd barely even talked about fixing broken code.

"I'm so stupid," she mumbled. And then, because the hum of the code swallowed her voice, she said it again, louder: "I'm _so stupid!_" It wasn't going to make her feel better in the long run, but it felt kind of good to yell it with no one to jump in, no one to reassure her that no she wasn't, they knew how she felt, she'd feel better eventually, she just needed to give it _time_.

King Candy's code flickered.

Taffyta's attention snapped to it. She stared hard, but it was as dark and lifeless as the moment she'd first laid eyes on it. "Did…did you just…light up?" she asked. Nothing happened. _Obviously _nothing happened. Feeling silly, she said, "Er…maybe do it again? To prove I'm not crazy?"

Ha, to prove she wasn't crazy? She was floating there talking most likely to herself, expecting to get a response from King Candy's dark, lifeless code. That was pretty much the _definition _of crazy. What was she _doing? _Why had she thought she could help him? This was idiotic; she was going to have to wait for Surge after all, and who knew if King Candy could even survive like this for that long, and—

Then, his code box flashed, much brighter than before. There was no mistaking it. She gasped and lunged forward, putting her hands on either side of the box. "You're in there," she said, her throat closing up with emotion. The box flashed again and she let out a sob of relief and happiness. Was it stupid to hug a box? She didn't care. She hugged the box, resting her forehead on the top edge with her eyes shut tightly and happy tears leaking out. He was alive. He was _alive_. She hadn't lost him.

After a second, though, she let go and floated back a bit, the effusive grin that had lit her face fading a bit. He was in there, but she couldn't talk to him.

_Come on, Muttonfudge. Think._

How did you talk to a code box? You didn't. Your code box was you, but _you _were actually outside the vault, walking and talking and living, while ones and zeroes coursed through these filaments and tendrils and talked to each other and made up your whole world.

_Your code box was you._ She turned around slowly and looked at her own box, flashing bright pink. The filaments running in and out of it were talking to other code boxes. What if she hooked King Candy up to her own code?

"Hold on a second, okay?" she said to him. Er, his code box. "I'm going to try something." She swam over to her box and tried to remember what you did to open it up. Oh, right! She tapped it twice, and the box expanded to show all the individual elements that made her _her_. Race cars, candy, something that might have been glitter, something that was definitely the poison symbol. She gulped. There were tons of lines she could pull out, but what if she screwed up something really integral to herself? What if she like, made it so that she got her left and right confused, or—the thought made her feel ill—what if she destroyed her racing ability?

She looked more closely and felt her nausea ease. Some of the boxes had unattached lines, like they were waiting for more code to get added on. Okay. She could work with that.

Armed with a plan, she collapsed her code box back down again, then physically shoved it closer to King Candy's. The distance wasn't far and her code box wasn't big, but the thing didn't want to move. She had to brace herself against Snowanna's box to get some traction. Once the two boxes were close enough, she expanded hers again, grabbed one of the loose filaments, and dragged it out. Then, she reached out and took hold of one of the lines of King Candy's code box.

She brought them closer together, holding them up in front of her. Was this actually going to work? Looking at his box—was it her imagination, or was it now glowing dimly?—she said, "Well, here goes nothing."

Slowly, she brought the two lines together until their ends touched.

And…nothing happened.

She wanted to cry. Or scream. Or both. She'd been so _sure_—

Then there was a loud buzz, a spark of electrical current, and the lines fused together. Taffyta shrieked, dropped the line as the shock passed through her, and fell back. "Ow," she muttered, rubbing one hand with the other.

"_That was impressive, my dear_."

She jumped, making herself tumble end over end until she banged her head on Candlehead's code box. "_Ow_," she said again as she reached out and grabbed at one of the many filaments around her, steadying herself.

"_Sorry._" The voice was contrite."_Look, I know it's probably unsettling, but yes you _are _hearing voices in your head, no you're not crazy, and also no, you have _no _idea how happy I am to see you, Taff. I mean, not really _see _you, it's not really like seeing in here, it's more like…well, I don't really know, like hearing? Feeling? So much of code is kind of, you know, outside the normal sensory experience, and things are funny in here—_"

"King Candy?" she whispered.

"_In the flesh. Well, not really at all, I suppose. Kind of exactly the opposite, actually._"

She clapped her hands over her mouth, not sure she if she was going to start laughing or crying. A wave of intense emotion crashed over her, a jumbled mess of soaring relief and blazing happiness, and in the end it was some combination of both, and she spent several minutes getting her watery laugh-sobs under control.

"_Are you okay?_"

Taking a deep breath, Taffyta said, "I am now. _You're _okay. That's the important part."

"_I mean, I don't know if I'd call this _okay_, exactly._"

Having his voice in her head was odd. It was like hearing her own internal monologue, but it wasn't her, and they weren't her thoughts. It was a good thing he'd reassured her that she wasn't losing it, though she supposed if she _was _losing it, that was the first thing her brain would tell her.

Taffyta swam closer to his code box. "Everyone thought you were dead. I—it's been—" She sucked in a breath. She wanted to appear strong and smart and capable, even though she felt decidedly like none of those things. In fact, she felt like she was one kind word away from a hysterical breakdown. "I'm just really glad you're not."

There was a hesitation—how did she know it was a hesitation, and not just silence?—and then King Candy said, "_You must have gotten my message._"

"Just today. A couple hours ago." She reached out and put a hand on his code box. It felt warmer now than it had, or maybe she was imagining things. "It was an accident, really."

"_Well, it would've had to be. Sorry, it wasn't a great plan, but it was sort of all I had._"

His voice was a blend of King Candy's and Turbo's, the sort of thing that she once would have found disconcerting but which now seemed totally natural. "It worked, that's all that matters." The urge to stay in physical contact with the box was hard to fight, but with effort, she pulled her hand away. She couldn't decide if this felt like a wonderful dream or like finally waking up from the nightmare she'd been living in. It seemed to change from moment to moment. One minute it felt completely normal that she was floating in the code vault, surrounded by the flashing programming of her game and conversing with her best friend, who until a few hours ago she'd thought was dead and was now a voice in her head. The next minute it all seemed totally insane.

She reached out and touched the box again. Finding him still alive in here was a miracle, but this wasn't _him_. "So," she said. "I'm definitely going to fix your code, and like, totally save the day and everything, but I kind of need a favor from you."

The box flickered as he laughed, "_Hoohoohoo! At this point, I'd say I owe you, wouldn't you? I mean, not only have I been living rent free in your house for what, seven years now? But you just tracked me down in here with a hunch and mostly your brains. 'Anything' probably doesn't cover it. But—anything, Taff._"

Taffyta hugged her arms around herself. "I don't know how to fix what's wrong with you myself. I need your help."

"_Oh, that's nothing._"

"Do you know what's wrong?"

"_Pfft._" It was easy to imagine the look that he'd have on his face if he was there with her, instead of a few bits of code clinging to life. He'd wave a hand, as though fixing his own code was no big deal. As though directing _her _to fix his code, while he couldn't see what she was doing, was something he did every day. His eyes would be half-hooded, and he'd be giving her that smile that was a mixture of smugness, confidence, and wicked intelligence. "_My dear, don't forget who you're talking to. When do we start?_"

Even though he couldn't see her, she gave him the smile that she'd always responded with—crooked, devilish, and totally ready to meet him on his level. "Right now."


	8. Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

They made a good team. Taffyta wasn't surprised. After all, the last seven years had been nothing if not them against the world. Or, okay, maybe not the world. Just the vast majority of the arcade. When she expanded his code, she found a jumbled mess of lifeless, floating icons, with only a few flickering in isolation. Seeing it for the first time gave her a sick feeling and she knew with a deep certainty that those few flickering boxes were the only thing keeping him tethered to life. Despite his nonchalance, he was barely hanging on.

"So," she said, and for the first time it occurred to her that she probably didn't need to talk out loud. He was in her head, so couldn't she just think whatever she wanted to say? But there was something too surreal about that. She needed the normalcy of talking. Anyway, it was nice to break the silence of the code vault. Realizing she hadn't said anything in a minute, she hastily went on, "So I can see all your code. It doesn't look good. It's all disconnected. And there's…" With a hard swallow, she said, "There's a _ton _of it." There was so much there to mess up.

"_Yes well, you know, it's a tad more _complicated_ than anyone else's in the game. Sort of the hazard of porting yourself over and coding yourself into a game that isn't yours._"

"You can say that again," she murmured, trying not to feel overwhelmed.

"_Listen, do you see the icon with my face on it? Er, my old face, that is._"

She bit her lip and looked around, floating upwards to get a closer look. Then, she spotted it. It was one of the few icons that was lit. "Your dorky, 8-bit, 80s face? Check."

"_It's Turbotastic, for your information._"

"Uh huh, sure it is, Your Majesty." Reaching for it, she said, "Is this the only one?" There were multiples of most of the icons that made up his code, just like there'd been in hers. She knew she could expand all of them for a more detailed look.

King Candy sounded mildly put out as he said, "_Yes. You see the crown next to it?_" Without waiting for a response, he said, "_Hook those up to each other_."

As she did so, she said, "So what am I doing?"

"_Those are the—well, it's slightly more complicated—I'll give you a better explanation once I'm put back together, how about that? I'm really—hoo-hoo—kind of Humpty Dumpty here, aren't I? But that's my base code, basically. See what I did there?_"

She stared at the two icons, joined now and both lit faintly. "Your base code is split it two?"

"_See, the glitching makes a lot more sense now, doesn't it?_"

It did. No wonder he glitched back and forth between King Candy and Turbo—he was literally both of them. Part of her had always thought that he'd coded a complicated disguise for himself, like a skin that could be removed. But it wasn't that at all—his two forms, at their most basic, were equal parts of his core. Now that she thought about it, nothing else made sense. You didn't become a new person by putting on a costume.

The two of them got down to work. At first, she was petrified about doing something wrong. He told her what to look for, she hunted it down and did what he told her to. As she got used to what she was doing, her frayed nerves settled. Then she started to anticipate what he was going to say, reaching for the right icons without his direction. The third or fourth time it happened, he commented, a note of pride in his voice, "_You're good at this_."

"It's just the easy stuff," she said, but she still grinned at the praise. Before long, she was working mostly in silence, with him interjecting now and then when she needed help.

His presence in her head was comforting even when he was wasn't saying anything. She could still feel him there, like he was curled in a corner of her brain. Okay, that sounded creepy, but it was the opposite. It was like…like sitting in a room with someone, listening to them breathe, and being okay with the quiet.

And fixing his code was kind of soothing. It required concentration, but not so much that it was draining. As she coupled pieces of his programming together, she wondered how quickly she'd finish. Would he be able to do the Random Roster Race tonight? That made her realize she didn't have any idea at all what time it was. Was it _already_ tonight? Ralph had said the Oreo guard would check on her in a couple hours, but she couldn't remember that happening. Maybe he'd looked in and seen that she was still fine. That sounded about right for a guard who napped on the job.

"_So, Taff, don't take this the wrong way, but you seem…different. Somehow. Can't quite put my finger on it. Metaphorical finger, that is._"

She hooked a line into a race car icon that was floating past her head. "Probably because I am." The race car flashed and she let it go. "The upgrade changed a lot of stuff. I'm twenty-five now."

"_You're…what?_"

The befuddlement in his tone made her giggle. "Yeah. All of us are in our twenties now. There's a bunch of new tracks, you'll like them, they're not as easy. Well, they're different, I guess they'll probably be easy eventually. And we have day and night, and seasons—at least, I assume we have seasons. It's winter now. Ugh, hopefully it won't be winter forever."

"_Mm._"

"Still stuck on the me being twenty-five thing?"

"_I mean, a little bit._"

She sobered. "Everyone else loves it." That gave her pause. Did they? She'd barely talked to them in two weeks. In actuality, she had no idea what they thought about the upgrade at all.

He was quiet for a moment, then he asked, "_Everyone else. So you don't?_"

"I don't know." She concentrated on connecting more of his code, then said, "Not really. My body feels like someone else's. And—" Her face felt hot, suddenly, even though there was nothing for _her _to be embarrassed about. "—and guys in the arcade have been acting like…like jerks."

"_Oh?_" His tone was pleasant, but held a note of danger. Was it protectiveness? That was…a nice thought. And the fact that it was a nice thought surprised her.

"Yeah." Her cheeks still felt hot. "Like…whistling and yelling stuff at me. It's gross. Oh, and you know who I ran into?" She shuddered. "_Malcolm_. That guy who gave me the virus back when _Sugar Rush _reset?"

His tone changed to one of alarm as he asked, "_You did?_"

"Ugh, yeah. He was the creepiest of all, big surprise. He kept like, rubbing it in that you were gone." Something occurred to her, and though she didn't really want to give credence to anything Malcolm had told her, she added, "He said _Sugar Rush _is hooked up to Wi-Fi now and there's going to be more updates. Downloadable content, he called it."

"_He said _what_?_"

She stopped working and just floated there, feeling how agitated he was. "Is that bad?"

King Candy let out a hiss of air. "_Possibly. Probably. Another update would wipe me out all over again._"

Her heart plummeted and her face fell, but then she set her shoulders and said determinedly, "Well, then I'll come in here and fix everything again. Ralph said I have unlimited access to the code vault. I'll probably get really good at it."

"_Nonono, you don't understand—I don't think I'd survive another update._"

Taffyta's blood turned to ice. "Wh-what?"

He sighed. "_Look. When I coded myself into _Sugar Rush_, I put in sort of a…a failsafe, I guess. In case something like this happened. The possibility seemed _totally _remote, I almost didn't do it, figured it was a waste of my time…_"

"Okay, so, we code another one of these failsafes for you," she said, feeling better. "Easy."

"_Not so easy, actually. It'd still be temporary, and it will—I mean, Taffyta, this isn't a slight on your abilities, you know that, right? But it's, well, it's complicated, and working through you will take much longer. I'd need to get a look at the game's new programming to build it right, and it's not the kind of thing you do in a couple hours._"

"Do we have much of a choice?"

There was a silence. "_I have another question: do we know when that next update's coming?_"

"No," Taffyta said, her heart sinking.

"_It could be anytime, right?_"

Dismayed, she said, "But what could they possibly need to update? We _just _got this huge one!"

"_Security patches, bug fixes, who knows. Point is, we don't exactly have time for me to spend a couple months tinkering with the right code for a permanent fix. A permanent fix might not even be _possible. _If we had a bypass node, that would be different, but we don't. Well, I mean, obviously we don't…_"

"A what?"

"_Bypass node, it's a little part to stick on a code box; you can lock it off that way. I tried using it on the glitch's code to keep her from reseting the game when she crossed the finish line; didn't work, incidentally, they can be finicky_—"

"Well, great! So you have one!" She ignored the implication that Vanellope had actually managed to reset _Sugar Rush _more than once and that King Candy had correspondingly erased their memories more than once. It was something he'd alluded to before, but to be honest, she hadn't really wanted to ask.

With a sigh, he said, "_Nope. Threw it out. It didn't do what I wanted and it was suspicious to have it around._" Suspicious to who, she wanted to ask. No one in _Sugar Rush _would have known what it was. Had he been questioned, he could have said anything. There were plenty of times, Taffyta had come to realize in retrospect, that she had unintentionally confronted him about some central piece of his charade. He'd always come up with a response, an explanation, that contented her. At no point in fifteen years of his reign had she ever questioned that he was anyone other than who he'd said he was. It had never occurred to her to distrust anything he said.

"Fine." She took a deep breath, trying to calm down. They'd figure this out. He'd managed to survive the initial upgrade, get a message to her, and then she'd found him. No way was she going to lose him again after all that. "Tell me how to do the temporary failsafe and once you're fixed you can make the permanent one. Even if Ralph won't let you in the code vault, you can work on a terminal, and I'll come in here and make all the changes. Or Surge, if they won't trust me. It doesn't matter, as long as it gets done." There was a silence, and she could tell he was thinking where they needed to start. She glanced over her shoulder nervously, as though she'd be able to see an update coming.

Suddenly, she said, "Wait."

"_What's that?_"

Slowly, Taffyta said, "There might be another solution." When he didn't say anything, she went on, "Malcolm. He knew about the Wi-Fi hook-up and the updates. What if he knows a way to make the updates not affect your code? What if he actually _has _a—a bypass node?"

"_No. No way, I do _not _want him involved_—"

She crossed her arms over her chest and replied, "Yeah, trust me, I don't either. But I mean, he seems like the kind of guy who'd have something like that, you have to admit."

"_Yes well, he also seems like the kind of guy who'd lure a child to a sketchy game just to give her a virus and infect an arcade cabinet_."

She suppressed another shudder. The memory of Malcolm drugging her, always a bad one, felt like a violation now that she was an adult. "I'm not a kid anymore."

"_I'm pretty sure that's not going to matter a single bit to him_."

Glaring at—well, nothing, really, just the floating icons of his code that surrounded her—she said, "Do you have a better idea? I'll be careful. I'm not as stupid as I was back then."

There was a brief silence and then he said, sounding sad, "_You've never been stupid, Taffyta._"

She laughed, hearing the harsh note in it. "Yeah, I have, actually. More times than I can count. But I won't be this time. Come on." She paused, then added, "All I'm gonna do is ask. It can't hurt. If he doesn't have it, fine. But if he does, it's a way better fix than some temporary code that might not even work again."

She could practically feel him stewing. "_I'm really not a fan of this idea_."

"Yeah, no kidding." In a quieter voice, she said, "You really can't stop me, though."

Another silence. And then, "_I know that. Guess that's kind of a side effect of you growing up, isn't it? Can't exactly pretend like I have all the answers anymore._"

With a snort, she said, "No offense, but I figured out a long time ago that you didn't have all the answers."

"_Oh, thanks a lot._"

Her tone softened. "You have enough of them. But just—let me do this, okay? If another update comes and—and—" She couldn't even say it. "I need to find the best way to fix you. I can't lose you again." The depth of emotion in her voice was embarrassing. She cleared her throat and added, "I promise I won't take any candy from strangers, okay?"

There was something in his voice when he answered that made her feel less silly. "_Just—watch out, okay?_"

She smiled. "Hey, like I said, I'm not as stupid as I used to be. Anyway." Grabbing another connector in his code, she said, "We better get back to w—hey!"

There was a yank on the licorice rope around her waist—the rope that she'd totally forgotten about, and which she hadn't checked in hours. "I'm _fine!_" she yelled at however was reeling her back in, but they either didn't hear her or didn't care. Ugh, what did they think they were _doing_, she was working, she didn't have _time _to reassure anyone that she was fine and didn't need a babysitter.

"I'll be back as soon as I can!" she called to King Candy's code, which was a fading glimmer in the black, surrounded by the much brighter living code of the rest of the game.

His voice was as strong as ever. "_You know, it occurs to me that I'll probably be hitchhiking along with you as long as our code boxes are hooked up._"

Oh. Duh. Why hadn't she thought of that? She let herself get reeled to the code vault's door. "Yeah, well, no eavesdropping on my private thoughts, okay?"

"_Hoo-hoo, scout's honor. No snooping. By the way, I'm flattered you think I would know how to do that, I'm just a voice in your head, Taff—I'm not a mind-reader._"

The grin in his voice was obvious and infectious. Her answering smile was still on her face as she reached the circular entrance to the code vault and stumbled back into the sterile hallway, her legs forgetting for a moment how to operate in normal gravity. Ralph caught her arm before she tumbled over. "Nice to see you smiling, Muttonchops. I'm guessing that means good news?"

For a second, she just stood still, finding her center of gravity again. Then, suddenly, everything hit her all at once—she'd done it, she'd gone into the code vault and she'd _found him alive_, King Candy was actually alive and the only thing she could do was scream, throw her arms around Ralph, and laugh.

"Whoa, uh, are you okay there, kid?" he asked. "You don't have some kinda like, code vault madness, do you?" When she continued to laugh, he muttered, "Oh boy. Too long in there makes you nuts, I guess."

Getting her laughter under control, she wiped tears from her eyes and hopped back down to the floor. "No, I'm fine, I'm fine."

"_No offense, but you _do _seem a few toppings short of an ice cream sundae._"

Taffyta ignored King Candy's teasing in her head and hugged her arms around herself. "Ralph, he's alive!" she said. "I found him!"

"You did? Well, look at you." Ralph grinned at her and gave her what she thought was probably supposed to be a pat on the back, but instead felt like getting hit with an anvil between her shoulder blades. "So where _is _King Nilly Wafer?"

Slipping the licorice rope off her waist, she replied, "Not fixed yet. I have to—" But she stopped. Ralph would have the exact same reaction upon hearing her plan that King Candy had, and the former was in a much better position to actually hinder its progress. "—I need to get something before I can finish. What time is it? Is the arcade closed?"

"Uh, yeah." Ralph narrowed his eyes at her and gave her a penetrating look. "It's practically midnight. You've been in there hours. That's why I pulled you out, I got worried when no one had seen you."

With a shrug, she said, "I just got caught up working."

"Little Miss Hacker, huh." Shaking his head, he said, "Guess it was only a matter of time, considering the company you keep."

Grinning, she said, "I'll take that as a compliment."

"Yeah, I'm not sure I meant it as one."

Taffyta laughed, then waved to him as she turned to leave the hallway. "See you around, Ralph."

"Hey, wait, where are you going?"

She didn't stop, but turned around so she was walking backwards. "I told you, I need to get something." Flashing him a victory sign and another grin, she turned and ran out of the hallway, through the throne room, and to her kart, still parked outside the front of the castle.


	9. Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

As she hopped into her kart and started it, Taffyta said, "So where do you think I'll find Malcolm?"

There was silence in her head. Her breath caught. Maybe she _wouldn't _be able to hear King Candy if she was outside the code vault. Then, she heard an unwilling mumble before he said, "_And may I ask why you think I would know that?_"

With relief, she said, "Because you told me once that you knew 'every bit of deadbeat malware floating around.' Time to prove it."

"_Oy. Your memory. I _did _say that, didn't I? Listen, it's not like I went looking for these people. It was just a good idea to keep an eye on them. They were trouble, and since—you know, I was trouble myself, it just made sense._"

"Uh huh." She started driving. "Stop stalling."

King Candy chuckled. "_Fine, fine. I still don't like this idea, by the way. But I know he'd go watch those after-hours fights in Street Fighter sometimes._"

"The _what?_"

"_Oh, you don't know about those? Maybe that's for the best…_"

Pulling the brim of her hat down over her eyes, she accelerated onto the main road out of _Sugar Rush_, ignoring NPCs trying to wave to her. "What if he's not there?"

"_Let's take this one game at a time._"

She just grunted in grudging agreement and sped up the Rainbow Bridge, gunned it past the train station, and shot into the tunnel to Game Central Station. Soon, she passed the train, crawling compared to her speed, and quickly reached the other end of the cord, where she parked in her spot, jumped out of her kart, and hurried into Game Central Station. _Street Fighter _was down near _Tapper_, which meant she had to walk practically the length of the hall. At least she didn't have to worry about Surge bugging her. Presumably he was still dealing with the electrical flow into their game.

Nobody tried to talk to her. That wasn't totally unusual—after all, she wasn't exactly winning any popularity contests in the arcade, but it was still a relief. And no one whistled or yelled anything at her this time, either. Also a relief. She made it to _Street Fighter _in record time, a little out of breath, and caught the graffitied steel monorail from the station just as it was about to leave.

There was another man in the car, who smiled at her. She just turned her head to look out the window. Too bad she didn't have headphones. Did guys take the hint if you were wearing headphones? Ugh, the _last _thing she wanted was for him to come and sit next to her—oh no, no no _no_, he was getting up—

"Hi," he said, sitting down next to her.

Her eyes flicked down to the gap between them and she shifted her body further towards the window to maximize the space. "Hi," she said flatly, in a tone that didn't invite further conversation.

He didn't get the hint. Headphones probably wouldn't have worked, either. "I've seen you around. Taffyta, right? From _Sugar Rush_?"

Like he didn't know who she was. _Everyone _knew who she was. The ringleader of the brats who'd picked on Vanellope. Turbo's protégé if you were being nice. His minion if you weren't. "That's me," she said, still not looking at him.

Suddenly, she found an outstretched hand in her face. "I'm Michael," he said. "From _Virtua Cop_."

Sighing, she shook his hand. "Yeah, I know you," she said, finally conceding that she was going to have to be involved in this conversation for at least the next few minutes.

Michael from _Virtua Cop _looked delighted to have her attention. Didn't they call him "Rage?" He looked kind of dopey to her. Weird nickname. Must have just been his programming. "I've never seen you at one of these fights," he said.

"Yeah, I've never been," she said, leaving out the fact she'd been clueless that they even happened.

"You here tonight because of your friend?"

That made her start. How could he possibly know that? "Um, I…what?" she asked, trying to be cool and not panic.

The weird, frozen rictus of a smile on her face didn't seem to faze him. "Candlehead. You came to see her, right?" At that moment, the monorail pulled into the station with a screech and Michael stood up, still giving her that dopey smile. "Well, maybe I'll see you there."

For a second, Taffyta was so befuddled that she just sat in her seat and watched him disembark. What had he been talking about? _Candlehead? _What did she have to do with anything? Well, in any case, he hadn't known the real reason she was here, and that was all she really cared about.

The monorail door slammed shut and she jumped. Right! The real reason she was here. Before the train could depart, she leapt out of her seat and punched the button to make the door open. Outside on the platform, there were hand lettered signs posted. "'Thursday Fight,'" Taffyta read out loud.

"_Still the same catchy name, I see. Er, hear. Who were you talking to?_"

"Some guy."

"_I have to say, only being able to hear one side of a conversation is distinctly disconcerting._"

With a smirk, she said, "Yeah, well, remember, you're not supposed to be eavesdropping."

Taffyta had only been to _Street Fighter _a couple times, once for its 25th anniversary party, and once because Vanellope had decided they were all going to learn self-defense and that it could only be done there. Not that it had changed much. Zangief had been surprisingly patient but none of them had been very attentive students. As she entered the game, she was hit immediately with the briny reek of salt. _Street Fighter's _stages were arranged around a central lagoon. Each pavilion was reachable on foot, but there were also boats that criss-crossed the water. The nearest sign for the fight pointed to the left and she could hear a crowd, so she didn't bother with the boats.

The sound of cheering brought her to a wooden dock with uneven slats, with a grass-roofed bungalow on stilts in the water and a banyan tree growing in front of it. She shuddered at the snake that was coiled in the branches. The stands on one side of the arena were filled with characters from across the whole arcade. Mr. Pickle from _BurgerTime _was selling burgers and—yeah, that was definitely a keg from _Tapper's_, being manned by Guile.

"This is kind of a big deal," Taffyta murmured as she made her way towards the stands.

"_Always kind of was._"

"Did you go to these?" she asked.

"_Once or twice. Just to see and be seen, you know. Being a _complete _recluse always seemed like it would've aroused suspicion._"

She made a vague noise of agreement and entered the arena, too distracted to smile at the NPC who handed her a program. Not that it mattered, since when he realized who she was, he frowned and withdrew his hand. She took the program anyway and climbed the steps to the very top of the stands, taking a seat on the end of the uppermost bleacher. Without glancing at the program, she craned her neck to look around, trying to spot Malcolm.

"I don't see him," she said. The characters in front of her, Yuni and Alice from _Dance Dance Revolution_, turned around and looked at her. Taffyta gave them a big smile which, in retrospect, probably just looked creepy. The two dancers looked at each other and then turned back around. Taffyta figured she could probably count on them ignoring her.

"_Give it some time. He never makes a big entrance._"

"I don't get how Surge lets him hang around," she muttered. "Isn't it his job to take care of creeps like Malcolm?"

"_Listen, far be it for me to insult the job Surge does—well wait, I suppose that's exactly what I'm about to do, hoo-hoo—but viruses aren't exactly Surge's purview. There's not much he could do even if he tried. Which he really doesn't_."

Feeling a little loyalty to Surge for the help he'd given her, Taffyta muttered, "I'm sure he tries."

"_Mmph._" She'd never heard a more dubious syllable in her life. Well, that was an exaggeration. Vanellope had been queen of expressing skepticism through monosyllabic noises. The thought of Vanellope made her clench her fists, like always. Years ago, Taffyta would have known without a doubt that Vanellope would have been totally behind Taffyta in her efforts to save King Candy. But that had been _then_, before Vanellope started harping about how boring _Sugar Rush _was. Before she'd run off and ditched them like they never even mattered.

Ugh, why was she thinking about Vanellope? Like she didn't have _enough _to be upset about? Pushing the thought from her mind, she continued to watch the stands as the first fighters came out. The crowd noise got louder. Michelangelo from _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles _and one of the players from _Hoop Jamz _were facing off, and despite herself, she found her attention drawn to it. This was the first time she'd ever seen an MMA fight and her mouth opened in surprise at the first punch that connected. The crunch was audible and she felt sick to her stomach. They were outside their _games_, what if they got really hurt?

Michelangelo landed a roundhouse kick on his opponent, who stumbled back. The crowd cheered. The two of them danced around each other, dodging and feinting, neither of them getting a solid hit. There was kind of an art to it, wasn't there? Taffyta found herself leaning forward, transfixed. Maybe she was starting to understand why people came to these things.

"Hey, Blondie."

Taffyta jumped and looked to her left. Malcolm was sitting there, picking at his teeth with a toothpick. Huh, he'd found a way to be grosser, look at that. "Hi," she said, turning to him.

There was a collective groan from the crowd and Yuni yelled, "Get 'im, Mikey!"

"Never seen _you_ at a Thursday Fight before," Malcolm said. "Why the sudden interest?"

She glanced at the fight. Michelangelo seemed to be winning. "I heard you hang out here," she said. For a moment, she was unable to make her next words come out, but then, she forced herself to say, "I needed to talk to you."

Giving her a slimy smile, he said, "Well, imagine that."

Taffyta grit her teeth. "I'm looking for a part and I was wondering if you had one. I can pay, I've got plenty of money saved up." Years and years of winning Random Roster Races had made her one of the wealthiest characters in the game. Normally, it was totally meaningless. What use did she have for money? A coin a night to enter the Random Roster Race, some pocket change for burgers and root beer, which she'd rarely bothered with anyway. But for once, all that money was actually going to come in handy.

He removed the toothpick from his mouth and flicked it away. "You have my attention."

There was a huge cheer from the crowd and Taffyta glanced down at the fighters. The basketball player had somehow turned the fight around and had been declared the winner, while Michelangelo limped away. The next two fighters came out and Taffyta's jaw dropped. "_Candlehead?_" she said incredulously, forgetting all about Malcolm for a moment. This _had _to be a mistake, why was her friend out there like she was going to _fight_, that was nuts, totally bananas, there was no way—

But she flipped the program over and there was Candlehead's name. Her opponent was Paperboy. How was _that _a fair fight? That kid was the _worst_, he was always accidentally flinging his paper and claiming it was an accident when it smacked King Candy in the head. "Frosted flakes," she said, feeling faint.

"_So Taff, don't mind me, just, you know, go about your business there, but—here's the thing, maybe you could be a _teensy_ bit more descriptive when you talk, it's hard to follow what's going on, sort of like spotty reception, and—look, did you find Malcolm? And did you say _Candlehead's _there?_"

She ignored King Candy and watched in horror as the fight started. Paperboy immediately hit Candlehead with a left hook. Candlehead looked shocked. It was hard to tell from the back of the arena, but it looked like her eyes were filling with tears. Taffyta wanted to march down there and put a stop to this and she _almost _got to her feet, but then, so fast that she was just a blur of green hair and fire, Candlehead swept her knee under Paperboy's legs and took him down.

Malcolm cleared his throat and Taffyta started, then looked back at him. "You had something to say about some kind of business arrangement?" he said.

It was hard to tear her eyes away from the fight, but she took a breath and nodded. "I'm looking for a bypass node," she said, her voice low. Not that there was any chance of anyone overhearing this conversation. Everyone was screaming their heads off. Taffyta couldn't even look, she didn't want to see what was happening.

A smile spread across his face. It wasn't pleasant. "A bypass node, huh? Now what could a girl like you need something like that for?"

"None of your business," she said.

"Ah-ah-ah, Blondie, better be nice. I have something you want, and I'm guessing if you came to _me_, you must want it pretty bad."

At these words, he leered at her. It took every fiber of her being to keep staring him down. "So does that mean you have one?" she asked.

Suddenly, the crowd noise turned from cheers to gasps. Despite herself, Taffyta turned to look, then clapped a hand over her mouth. Candlehead had pulled out a Sweet Seeker cannon and had it perched on her shoulder, locked, loaded, and ready to fire. Chun-Li and Blanka rushed out to wrestle it out of her grasp.

"I might," Malcolm said, and her attention snapped back to him. He was staring at her with a look on his face that she disliked even more than his usual creepy expression. "Something like that though, that's a speciality item. Doesn't come cheap."

"I told you I can pay," she said. "Money isn't a problem."

That sleazy smile crept onto his face again. "I'll take your money. That's not an issue." His eyes flicked down and she pressed her knees together, resisting the urge to tug down on the hemline of her dress. The last thing she wanted to do was show how uncomfortable he made her. "But it's gonna cost you more than that."

Clearly her paltry efforts to seem like he wasn't setting her totally on edge were failing. He knew how much he intimidated her. So fine. She'd be herself, the smug, confident bully who'd ruled the roost in _Sugar Rush _for fifteen years.

Crossing her arms over her chest, she said in a bored tone, "What's the price, Malcolm? Or are you wasting my time? Do you actually even _have _the part?"

He laughed. "Oh, I have one. I'm just trying to figure out why _you_ need it."

"I already told you—" she began.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. None of my business." He studied her and she had the uncomfortable sensation that he could tell more from looking at her than she had any idea she was showing. Slowly, he said, "Could it be that your pal Turbo isn't as dead as everyone thought? Sorry." He laughed. "I meant as dead as everyone _hoped_." Taffyta clenched her fists in her lap and Malcolm's smile widened. "Got it in one, I guess. Ooh, Blondie, you _do _need that bypass node. So how'd he survive? That's a pretty smart piece of coding, but I guess if anyone was gonna pull it off, it'd be him." He shook his head, actually looking admiring for a brief moment, and then met her eyes. "How long till the next update to that sweet little game of yours?"

She tilted her chin up, trying to look imperious. "I'm sure it's gonna be like, weeks, or you know what, probably months before another one—"

"You sure about that?" Malcolm's grin turned wolfish. "Did you check the time on the Wi-Fi port?" At her blank stare, he laughed. "Oh, come on, sweetheart, don't tell me you didn't know about it. When that next update's about to come through, that little counter starts up. Something like that seems like it'd be pretty handy to someone in your situation."

Her fingers were digging into her palms. "What do you want for it, Malcolm?" she asked tightly.

He snapped his fingers. "Five thousand coins."

Taffyta blanched. That was a huge amount, more than a year's worth of winning first place in the Random Roster Race. She had it, but it would eat a huge hole in her savings. Oh well, what was she saving for, anyway? A bigger house? A fancier kart? She didn't need money for those things. "Fine," she said. "Tell me where to meet you. You bring the part, I'll give you the money."

Shaking his head, Malcolm said, "I wasn't done. Five thousand coins. _And _you go out with me."

For a minute, all she could do was stare. It took every ounce of self control she had not to laugh in his face. "Are you kidding me?" she finally asked.

Malcolm pulled another toothpick out of his pocket. "Nope. That's my price. Take it or leave it." He eyed her. "I think it'd be quite the talk of the town to be the first one to nail Taffyta Muttonfudge. You really filled out nicely since that upgrade."

She saw nothing but shattered glass for a moment, shattered glass and a dark red tunnel of fury compressing her vision. Her lungs felt flat with rage. He was _revolting_, disgusting, the last person on the planet she wanted to spend a single second more in the company of, let alone—let alone—_that_.

"_I'm _really_ trying to stay out of it but what's going on?_" King Candy spoke up suddenly.

Her breathing caught. There wasn't really an option. She'd do just about anything for King Candy. And—just because she agreed to a date, didn't mean she had to actually go through with it. Once she had the part, she was outta there. Easy. She could handle it. She knew what she was doing.

Clamping her lips together and breathing hard through her nose, Taffyta gave Malcolm one curt nod. "Fine," she said. "Deal."

He reached a hand out and traced a finger down her jawline. She jerked away, her skin crawling. It just made him laugh. "Why don't you meet me over by the Wi-Fi outlet at seven this morning? Bring the money."

Perfect. A date with the creepiest asshole in the arcade _and _an illicit trip to the internet. What a winner.

"Bring the part," she said.

With another laugh, he stood up. "See you soon, Blondie," he said.

The crowd cheered for something happening in the next fight and Taffyta started, looking away from him. When she glanced back, he was further away than he should have been able to get, weaving in between characters who gave him dirty looks, if they acknowledged him at all.

"_Taffyta._" King Candy's voice sounded supremely nonchalant. It was a dead giveaway that he was deeply concerned. "_What did you just agree to?_"

Instead of responding to that, she asked, "Hey, is there somewhere in the code vault where I might find a Wi-Fi port?"

Yuni and Alice turned around and looked at her again. Elbowing Yuni, Alice said, "Told you she's crazy. Why else would she hang out with Turbo?"

Taffyta stood up straight, fixed both of them with her iciest stare, and stalked away from her seat.


	10. Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

There was a countdown.

Taffyta almost threw up when she saw the numbers, bright red, ticking down. There was no way to know when it had started, but it currently read 11:47:52, and each second that ticked by felt like a grain of sand slipping through an hourglass. Shakily, she said, "Um, we have a pretty serious problem."

"_And what's that?_"

With a hard swallow, she replied, "We don't even have twelve hours before the next update. I don't have any choice. I have to get the bypass node from Malcolm." She kicked away from the timer and headed back to his code. Twelve hours was hardly any time at all. Her stomach had twisted itself into one giant, anxious knot. "How much more work do you think I need to do on your code? I have to meet Malcolm at seven, and who knows how long I'll be gone…" The knot in her stomach tightened. It was just past two in the morning. There wasn't enough time.

"_Don't worry. You'll be fine. Well, I guess _I'll _be fine, is what I mean_."

Had his tone held a note of concern? Did he really think she'd be able to do this? Because she was starting to really doubt herself; she'd anticipated having days, and instead she had just under twelve hours. She expanded his code and got to work, blocking out everything except what she needed to do to repair it. As she worked, she kept one eye on the watch that she'd brought from home when she'd swung by to get the five thousand coins.

She didn't even realize she was biting her lip until she tasted blood. She flinched at the sting as she ran her tongue over the cut she'd made with her teeth. When she put a finger to her lip, her glove came away smeared with red. Hissing with pain, she ignored the taste and kept working. She had to finish. She _had _to.

"_Not that one_," King Candy said suddenly.

Taffyta froze, a connector clutched in one hand and one of his code icons in the other. Had she been talking out loud? Was she losing it? "What am I doing wrong?" she asked.

"_Well, that wouldn't have been _wrong_, precisely, but you know, I sort of like my hair—er, such as it is—the way it is._"

Despite the ball of iron in her gut, a giggle snuck out. "So what did I just accidentally do?"

"_Well, in that _particular_ combination, you just coded a pretty impressive mohawk._"

She snorted with laughter, then immediately sobered as panic clutched at her. "Wait—if I did _that_ wrong, what else have I messed up?"

"_Nothing. What, you think I can't feel every connection getting repaired?_"

Actually, she hadn't known that. As she corrected her mistake, she said, "So I'm doing okay."

"_Okay?_" He sounded incredulous. "_My dear, you're amazing. Not many people could—you've only been doing this for a few months, and I mean, look at you_." He paused. "_Not that _I _can look at you. It's going to be really nice to have a physical form again, I'm not sure I really appreciated it enough while I had it._"

Looking around at his code, she realized she'd repaired half of it. She squinted. Maybe over half of it. That was good, but time was against her. Then, his words sank in. Did he really think she was amazing? The thought made heat rise to her face. That was—well—that was really…it was nice. She took a quick breath and started working again. Race car to race car to crown; even when it wasn't obvious what needed to go where, something in the code seemed to speak to her. And when she hesitated, or made the wrong call, he corrected her gently.

In some ways, she'd never understand him. Thirty-two years ago, he'd thrown away everything, lashing out in a fit of rage and fear, and gotten both his own game and another game unplugged. Twenty-two years ago, he'd taken over _Sugar Rush _on the very first day it had been plugged in, gaining access to the code vault and—well, everyone knew that part. This was a man who'd done terrible things. And yet, he could also be kind and patient, not just to her, but to the other racers, too. She'd seen him help Candlehead rotate the tires on her kart before a race. He'd brought back a recording of _DDR's _track list for Snowanna once. He'd lent coins to racers through the years who'd run out and couldn't enter the Random Roster Race. There'd never been a day that everyone who _wanted _to take part couldn't.

Well, except Vanellope. That was the sticking point, wasn't it? What he'd done to Vanellope was beyond the pale. _TurboTime _and _RoadBlasters _had been an accident, a terrible accident, but one that he _might _have come back from. What he'd done to _Sugar Rush _meant he'd always be the arcade pariah.

He'd told her once that she reminded him of himself. Over the years she'd taken that both as the highest compliment and, once she'd found out who he really was, a black mark on her character. But suddenly, she understood that it was neither; it was somewhere in the vast in-between that was being alive and being human. Or at least, a collection of pixels and binary that was close enough.

Taffyta checked her watch and her heart sank. It was already 6:30 in the morning. Where had the time gone?

Swallowing hard and trying to sound more confident than she felt, she said, "I have to go now." She had until 1:54 PM to get the bypass node, get back to the code vault, fix the remaining broken parts of his programming, and install the part. The thought filled her with terror.

"_Not to sound like a broken record, but be careful._"

"Yeah. I will be." She tried to put Malcolm's sleazy…sleazy, ugh, _grossness_ out of her mind. Being twenty-five was great for revelations about the people you loved, but a whole lot less great if you were female. Did all the other women in the arcade put up with this? It didn't seem right.

She attached one more connector, then took a breath and collapsed his code. There wasn't anything else to say, so she didn't speak. Her chest tight with nerves, she swam back to the code vault's entrance, trying to ignore the way her hands were starting to shake.

The Wi-Fi outlet had been steadily accumulating further obstacles to entry ever since the router had been plugged in the previous year. The police tape was still there, but now there were also steel barricades, orange and white A-frame barricades with flashing lights on them, bollards, and spike strips to stop anyone from a racing game from driving in. The _Sugar Rush _racers had made a game out of guessing what kind of ineffectual obstruction Surge was going to put up next, and it was considered extreme good fortune to actually see him erect anything. He had never appreciated the way they'd always stood a little ways off, giggling and cracking jokes at his expense.

Taffyta stood in front of the outlet, her arms crossed over her chest. It was a _terrible _idea to go in there, especially with Malcolm, but she didn't have much choice. There wasn't any time to be smart about saving King Candy, only time to save him whatever way she could. Hopefully she'd get the part and be able to bail.

"Glad to see you made it, Blondie."

She whirled around. Malcolm was standing there in his stupid jeans and dumb button-up shirt. It had a Chinese dragon embroidered on one side. Without greeting him, she held out the coins. The magic of code—they all fit in a makeup bag. "Five thousand, just like you said. Can I have the part?"

He smiled. It wasn't a nice smile at all. "Not so fast. That was only half of the price we agreed on." He turned towards the outlet and squeezed past the barricades, then lifted the police tape. "Ladies first."

Taffyta looked around. Game Central Station was slow right now and no one was paying any attention to her. Making a face, she followed him and ducked under the police tape.

Since the Wi-Fi router had been plugged in last year, Taffyta hadn't been particularly interested in visiting the internet. People like _Malcolm_ came from the internet—why would she want to _go _there? No way, she was perfectly happy to stay at Litwak's. She was one of the people that Vanellope thought was boring, doing the same thing every day, in the same dull arcade she'd always lived in. Whatever. Crumbelina, Minty, Gloyd, and Swizz had tried to sneak in one day, but Surge had caught them, and then Calhoun had brought them into _Hero's Duty _to talk to them. The four of them had never spoken of it again. And they hadn't tried to go back to the internet.

That was when Surge had set up his internet visa process, which was nothing but a bureaucratic, red-tape and form choked waste of time. A few characters had managed to actually get a visa to visit the internet, but between the inconvenience and her own disinterest in the place, she hadn't even thought about applying. It seemed safe to assume that Malcolm didn't have one, either.

Consequently, she'd never even been inside the outlet. Rather than a train station, there was a black trench that bright, glowing green discs were flowing over. She'd never seen anything like it and it made her nervous. Even _more _nervous, which was a real feat. "After you, Blondie," Malcolm said.

She glared at him and hopped onto one of the discs. He stepped onto the one behind her and they quickly left the light of Game Central Station behind as the darkness of the cord swallowed them. The trip was eerily silent, both because the discs made no sound and because she had no intention of engaging Malcolm in conversation.

When they arrived in the router, Taffyta looked around and shuddered. It was a big, black room; the walls, floor, and ceiling all the same color and flowing into each other. The only light came from the circuity set into the walls, which cast a bright green glow. There wasn't another soul there. It was spooky, and she didn't like anything about it.

"Ready?" Malcolm asked, grabbing her arm.

She yanked it out of his grasp and took a few steps back. "Where's the part?"

Without answering, he took hold of her arm again and pulled her towards the platform in the center of the router. "Don't you even want to know where I'm taking you? Figured you'd be excited for a night on the town. Remember the good old days, back when we met? I brought you to that party over in _Extreme EZ Living_."

She sneered. His grip on her arm hurt. But she needed that part, so she'd play along. Up to a point. "You tricked me, drugged me, and gave me a _virus_. So gee, forgive me if I'm not super impressed by your idea of a good time."

He laughed and led her up onto the platform, where he finally dropped her arm. She forced herself not to rub the spot that was still throbbing from his grip. There was already a bruise forming, probably, but it would heal once she got back to her own game. "What are you looking for, Blondie? Culture? Museums? Shopping? You name it. I'll bring you there."

God, did he actually think he could convince her to have _fun _with him? Did he think that justified the fact that his sole interest in her was to—well—ugh. She was twenty-five now, so she knew what adults got up to with each other. With effort, she kept her gag reflex down. Even if something like that interested her—and considering at the moment she was still faintly embarrassed by the fact that she had to wear a bra, which made it pretty unlikely—she would rather die than do it with a creep like Malcolm. Yuck. Yuck, yuck, _yuck_.

The part, though. She had to get that part. Even if she had no intention of actually going anywhere with him, she had to make him think she did. She crossed her arms over her chest and pretended to think about it. "What about shopping?" she said, pitching her voice up more than she needed to. The more clueless and ditzy she sounded, the better. People were all too ready to believe it about her.

"You got it." He walked towards the portal. "Let's go."

Taffyta didn't budge. "I want the bypass node," she said. "Come on. I gave you the money and I'm going with you. Can you just—it would make me feel better." Inspiration struck and she let her voice get shaky. Could she force a few tears out? Not that doing either was much of a stretch; she'd been on a knife's edge of barely-contained panic every since she'd seen that countdown. What time was it now? 7:15? Time was slipping away and she was wasting it here. "I'm really worried about King Candy," she said, her voice choking up. "I don't know what else to do to save him besides use this part."

Malcolm narrowed his eyes at her. She tried not to hold her breath. Probably better to let her chest heave a little, anyway. There was a long silence while he stared at her. Then, he laughed and pulled something out of his pocket. "Here." He tossed it and her heart froze in her chest as she scrambled to catch it.

Since she didn't know what a bypass node looked like, she had to assume this was it. And it didn't look like much, just a small case made of a gray, plasticky material. There were holes at the top and bottom, presumably for the code filaments to pass through. She pocketed it. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Malcolm drawled. "Now, if you're feeling better, I believe we have a date?"

Taffyta pressed her lips together, then nodded. She joined him at the edge of the portal, keeping her feet outside the demarcated lines etched into the ground. "Sure," she said.

She knew how this worked. You stepped over this line in the ground and got shot through the portal into the internet, where you got routed to some kind of central hub. Like Game Central Station, Vanellope had said, only, of course, because it was Vanellope, she'd said it was way cooler than Game Central Station. Once the process had begun, you couldn't stop it. You certainly couldn't turn around. Once you were on your way to the internet, you had no choice but to complete your journey. Even if you got there and turned around to come back immediately, it would still take several minutes.

Which meant Taffyta knew what she had to do. "You're the expert," she said, shifting her weight on her feet to center herself. "So I think you should go _first_."

With that, she shoved him as hard as she could into the portal. "Hey, what the—!" he yelled, as he rose up into the air and a gyrosphere closed around him. It didn't do anything to drown out the names he was calling her, but she just put a hand on her hip and cocked it, then grinned nastily and waved. "See you around," she said, and then, in case the message wasn't clear enough, she added, "Stay sweet."

Then the portal eye opened and the gyrosphere shot through. Taffyta's shoulders loosened and she allowed herself a moment to draw a breath. That took care of him. Hey, maybe he'd decide to do a little shopping himself. He could start with buying a less bro-tastic shirt. Then again, maybe he'd be on his way back immediately. At that thought, she turned and ran to the green discs that would take her back to Game Central Station.

"_Can I assume that you won't be having a candlelit dinner with Malcolm anytime soon, then?_"

Taffyta made a face. "Gag me."

"_Yes well, the feeling's sort of mutual._"

"Thanks for not like…getting weird once you figured out that's what he wanted."

"_You're very welcome. In the interest of full disclosure, the only reason you think I wasn't weird about it was because you couldn't see me._"

"There's nothing to see."

"_Exactly_."

It was tempting to hop from one disc to the next to get back quicker, but she didn't know what was in the blackness below and she didn't want to find out. Anyway, even if she _did _find out, she was pretty sure that knowledge would die with her roughly two seconds later. Or maybe a lot more than two. She didn't know how deep that blackness went. She shuddered. Falling into the trench below her feet seemed like pretty much the worst way imaginable to go. No thanks.

When she arrived back at the outlet, she ducked under the police tape and climbed over the barricades, only to yelp in shock as someone grabbed her wrist.

"Excuse me, but what do you think you're doing?"

Taffyta turned and found herself looking into Surge's very, _very _unimpressed face. "Surge!" she said. "I actually have a really good explanation for this—"

"Do you have a visa?" he asked.

"What? No, you know I don't!" She sucked in a deep breath. "Look, I know I'm not supposed to be in there, but would you just listen to me?"

He was already scribbling something on his clipboard. "I'm going to have to issue you a citation—"

"_Surge_," she snapped. It didn't work, so she did the unthinkable. She reached out and snatched his clipboard away.

For a moment, he stood there, his fingers curled into position as though he was still holding the clipboard. His face was turning a deeper shade of blue. Oh god, had she actually done it? Had she _actually _made Surge Protector mad? "You—" he spluttered.

But she cut him off. "_Listen to me_. I just sent Malcolm—you know Malcolm? Creepy virus, he's been hanging around ever since Litwak hooked his computer up to the internet in the 90s? I sent Malcolm to the internet. I'm sure he'll come back, so even though I know it's not really your thing to stop viruses, maybe you can incapacitate him for a couple weeks, at least? King Candy doesn't think you can do it, but I think you probably can."

She held his clipboard back out to him and he took it slowly, looking totally at a loss for words. "Oh?" he finally said. And then, "That's why you made an illegal visit to this outlet?"

Reaching a hand up and twisting her fingers in her hair in frustration, she resisted the urge to scream and instead said, "It's kind of a long story, but yeah, that's how it ends. So consider it a tip, okay? I've gotta go." She took off running. This whole thing was going to get her in trouble later, but she didn't care. It was 7:25.

"Wait—" Surge began.

Without looking back at him, she yelled, "Just send me the citation, okay?"


	11. Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

Taffyta spared fifteen minutes to rig up a countdown synced to the one on the Wi-Fi port, only because she knew she wouldn't be able to stop herself from going over to it to check it. In the end, it would save her time.

She wished she could _really _do that. Save herself time. Why couldn't she take some of the time that she'd laid in bed doing absolutely nothing and use it now? That totally should have been a thing; sometimes you didn't _need _all that time, like had she really needed to spend two weeks thinking King Candy was dead, only to find him and have just thirty-six hours to save him? Time was stupid.

And it was passing way too fast. By the time she started working on his code again, it was almost 9:00, giving her only six hours. Six hours to do almost as much work as it had taken her the past day and a half to accomplish. She was never going to make it.

"Can't I just put the bypass node on right now and finish reprogramming everything after the update?" she asked.

King Candy sighed. "_No. My code has to be hooked up to the rest of the game for the node to work, and it can't—I can't?—get hooked up until everything's fixed._"

"Of course," Taffyta muttered.

"_I mean, why make things easy, Taff?_"

"Ha, ha," she said sarcastically. Geez, what a total coping mechanism. The fact was that her hands were shaking and it was a real struggle to keep them steady while she worked. Her chest felt tight, too, and it was hard to get a decent breath through the band of anxiety squeezing her lungs.

Thirty minutes passed, then forty-five, but it felt like a fraction of that. She made a mistake and spent ten minutes redoing everything, then made another because she was rushing to try to make up time. Then it was 11:30 and there was still _so much _to do and she was never going to finish and this time he was going to die for real and that wouldn't be anyone's fault except hers—well, it would still be Litwak's, Litwak's and all the gamers who abandoned them for their phones and the internet; they were all just like Vanellope, bored with _Sugar Rush—_

Tears blurred her vision and she tried to blink them away, knowing she couldn't take the time to stop and cry. Then she sniffled and drew in a shuddering breath, and a huge teardrop rolled down her cheek and landed on the connector she was holding. It sparked and jumped in her hand and she shrieked, dropping it.

"_Are you okay?_"

A dam burst inside her. Okay? She hadn't been okay since the last night she'd seen him alive, since they'd sat in the living room coding soda cannon mounts and sharpened lollipop hubcap spikes for their karts, and laughed as they'd tried to decide which racer would cause the most carnage with them if any of their practice coding was actually real. "No! I'm going to fail," she blubbered like a stupid baby.

"_Hey. Taffyta. Stop._"

She cried harder.

"_Listen to me. Taff? Listen. _Focus."

Wiping her nose across the back of her hand, she tried to get her juddering breaths under control and to stop her tears.

"_Just—just breathe, okay?_"

She tried, and then she said, "I'm so sorry."

"_Why in coder's name are you sorry?_"

"Because I'm not going to be able to do this. I should have made Surge come with me, I should have—I don't know, but I wasn't the right person—I'm not smart enough, it was stupid to think I could pull this off—I'm a failure—" Her throat closed up again with a sob and she covered her face with her hands.

King Candy made an inarticulate noise, and then he said, "_Taffyta, seriously. You know I don't say this lightly but you're being ridiculous._"

That, finally, made her stop. "W-what?" she asked.

"_You're not smart? _Please_. Compared to who? Of _course_ you're smart—who else would've done what you have in the past thirty-six hours? And here's the thing, Taff, there's no one, _no one_, that I would've trusted to do this except you_."

"Yeah right, you would've taken help from anyone," she sniffled.

"_Well, I mean—okay, yes, I suppose, but they wouldn't have been as meticulous as you've been, and as thorough, and as—well, if I'm going to be honest, as much of a perfectionist, because that's what you are, and it's what makes you so good at everything you try._"

For a minute, she stayed silent. Then, she said, "I'm really not a very good painter."

He laughed. "_Okay, well, you got me. It's just the racing and the coding, I suppose. Oh, and your aim when you go shooting with Calhoun. And your cooking, when you actually bother. Let's not forget you're a killer mechanic, too, there's never been a problem with Pink Lightning you couldn't fix. What am I forgetting?_" With each thing that he named, she could feel herself turning redder. "_And I don't want to be embarrassing here, but you're the best friend a game-jumping, Cy-bug chow, universally reviled 80s racer could ask for. You're definitely more than I deserve._" He hesitated."_I'm, well, I'm lucky to have you. Anyone would be. You're the furthest thing from a failure there is._"

11:43. Taffyta took several deep breaths, sniffled one more time, and wiped the last of her tears away. "I can do this," she said, more to herself than King Candy. He didn't answer, so he must have known that. She reached for his code, knowing what to do without having to think about it. It was true, what he'd told her, she suddenly realized. You really _could _hear code if you listened hard enough.

She didn't look up again until she put the final icons into place and connected the last filaments where they belonged. King Candy had talked her through the last few complicated steps and when it was done, she exhaled and looked around. Every icon, every piece of his code, was lit up now. She'd done it. She'd actually done it.

It was 1:45 and the timer read less than nine minutes. "How do I hook up the bypass node?" she asked, pulling it out of her pocket.

"_You see those latches on the side? Open it up with those._" She peered at it, holding it at eye level and rotating it till she spotted the latches, and then popped them. The box sprang open. Inside was a stacked series of boards with holes cut through them in different places. "_You have to configure it. Top one goes at seventy-five degrees, next one at a hundred and thirty, the one below that at two hundred, and the bottom one at ten._"

Methodically, she spun each board to the correct setting. His memory amazed her. "What's this doing?"

"_Allowing two way communication but locking off any changes to my code except manual ones._"

Alarms went off in her head and she looked up. Which was stupid, because it wasn't like he was there to look at. "Doesn't that make you a vulnerability in the game? Like…a virus could get to you."

For a moment, he was silent. Then, he said, "_That's true._"

With one swift nod, she said, "Well, then I guess I have to make sure that doesn't happen."

There was an inarticulate noise. Then King Candy said, "_You're…something, Taffyta Muttonfudge._"

"I hope that's good."

"_Oh, yes. Remember that day up in the Frosty Mountains? That had to've been—oy, I don't know, twenty years ago? You'd just had a particularly amazing day of racing, you'd beat me more times than I usually cared to admit at the time, and I mean, more times than I usually care to admit now, but—anyway, you were in that spot up in the Frosty Mountains._"

Taffyta nodded, though he obviously couldn't see her. "Our spot."

"_Is it?_"

"Of course it is."

"_Well. That was—listen, you know what an antisocial streak I have? But that was the day I actually started…well, caring about someone besides myself._" There was a pause. "_Let me know if I'm getting too mushy, would you? I _really _feel like I am_."

1:50. Taffyta smiled and shook her head. "You're my best friend and I love you too, okay?" When he just made another noise, she said, "So what do I do with this bypass node now?"

His tone got more businesslike. "_The rest is pretty simple. You need to thread the dorsal connector on my code box through there. Close it back up and that's it. It draws power from my code so it'll turn on as soon as I'm plugged in again._"

Maybe it was the stress, but she giggled at the term. "Sorry, 'dorsal' reminds me of a gummi shark or something." 1:51. Yeah, definitely the stress. She exited his code and kicked up to grab the filament coming out of the top of his box.

But then he cleared his throat. "_Er, Taffyta, there's just one thing. You're going to have to disconnect first._"

She froze. "What?"

"_You need to connect my code back up to the rest of the game, and once you do that, you can put the node on. Our code can't be connected when that happens, though. It could have…unpleasant effects. Feedback loops, overloading the code cluster, a whole number of messy issues that are just better avoided._"

"But—" The panic was back. "But how am I supposed to know I did it right?"

"_Well, of course you'll do it right._"

How could he be so confident in her? _He _was the coder. Not her. Wavering, she said, "But I need your help."

"_Kind of a moot point, I'm afraid. It either happens this way or that update wipes me out._"

And _that _was unthinkable. Taffyta kicked out towards her own code and grabbed the filament connecting her box to King Candy's. It seemed to pulse like a heartbeat. "See you on the other side of this. For real." She wrapped her fingers tightly around the filament and took several deep breaths, trying to calm her hammering heart. "It's going to be _really _good to see your face."

"_Likewise, my dear. Believe me. Likewise._"

1:52. She scrunched her eyes shut and pulled the connectors loose. It was as though every light in her brain went dark _and _she'd just been hit with a combination Sweet Seeker and A La Mode. Whoa. She put a hand to her head, aching like someone had just clubbed it, and tried not to throw up. It was like being hungover, _really _hungover, and that was weird too because she'd never had a drop of alcohol in her entire life but she knew exactly what it would feel like.

There wasn't time feel better, though. Quickly and carefully, she threaded the filament through the bypass node, checking the boards again to make sure they were in the right positions. Then, even though her head was pounding and pinpricks of light were stabbing at the edges of her vision, she triple-checked it. Everything had to be right. There wasn't going to be a do-over. She ran her eyes over each board one more time, then she snapped the bypass node shut and latched it.

She glanced down at the timer. Thirty seconds left. Huh, _plenty _of time, it wasn't like she was cutting this close or anything. Taking the end of the filament again, she swam upwards to the code box above King Candy's. All the other racers were connected to this box, each separate filament combining into a bundle on the ventral side of it. Taffyta positioned herself at this spot, lined the filament in her hand up with the port on the code box, and pushed it into place.

There was an explosion of sparks, but she'd already shielded her face, expecting it this time. Then she looked down, her heart swelling with a painful surge of fear and hope as light traveled from the code box above her down through the connector. It hit his box and there was a long, horribly infinite moment where nothing happened.

Then, a pink glow spread through it. Taffyta clapped her hands over her mouth to contain either a laugh or a sob, or maybe both. She was still nauseated but now it was because her body had no idea how to deal with the emotions coursing through her. The glow was steady and strong, lighting the stylized picture of him and his name.

Before she got carried away by her surge of happiness, she snapped the bypass node into place on the connector. Would she be able to tell if it was working? What if it was broken? Maybe Malcolm had deliberately given her something defective to get her hopes up, just to make the crash when none of this worked hurt even more? But then, it lit up with a soft pink glow. There was nothing she could do but trust that it was working.

Suddenly, there was a deep humming noise and every code box in the vault flickered. Taffyta looked at the timer. Five seconds to the update.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

The hum reached an abrupt crescendo, whining at a higher, almost painful pitch, before it yanked itself to nothingness, an electronic glissando fade-to-black. The light went out on every code box and Taffyta found herself in pitch darkness. Wait, no. Her eyes adjusted a little and found a source of light—the bypass node. And then, beyond that, the timer, now counting up from zero. Was something happening? Was the game updating? Would she be able to feel it this time?

There was a weird tingling in her extremities, but she didn't know if that was the power of suggestion or something actually happening to her code. It didn't _look _like anything was happening to her code, or anyone's code. The black went on and on, the silence pressing in on her eardrums, and her discomfort grew, looming larger and larger inside her.

And then, just when she thought everything would overwhelm her, there was a stuttering sound. One by one, each code box in the vault clicked back on, like city lights coming on at dusk. Once again, she was surrounded by a glittering array of luminescence, like gemstones with their own internal fire. She looked down. King Candy's had come back too.

Slowly, she floated down to it. For a long moment, all she could do was stare, mesmerized by the steady, healthy glow emanating from the code box. Reaching out, she laid her palm on it. It was warm to the touch. It felt alive. "Are you in there?" she asked softly, knowing there was no way for him to answer. Anyway, maybe the right question was, _are you out _there.

She withdrew her hand. There was only one way to answer her question, and suddenly, she was terrified to find out what it was. What if she hadn't been in time? What if she'd done something wrong? She watched his code, but it just floated there, looking the same as everyone else's. Maybe that was the best she was going to get. His code box looked the same as every other code box in the vault now—except for the dark blotch of the bypass node affixed to the connector filament like a carbuncle.

Taffyta drew in a breath. There was no point in staying here. If she'd succeeded, then everything she was looking for was out _there_.

Slowly, she swam back to the entrance to the code vault, stepping out and sealing the door behind her when she'd pulled herself into the hallway. She kicked the licorice rope off and for several moments, just stared at the door. For decades, all she'd been was a racer. And being a racer had always been enough. Being a racer still _was _enough. But without looking for it, she'd discovered she could be something else, too.

Whatever she found at home, she was a coder now. She held her hands out in front of her, turning them over to look at her palms. What a weird thought. Her, Taffyta Muttonfudge. _Coding_. Oh well. She'd always been King Candy's protégé, hadn't she? Or, if not always, then long enough to call it always. He'd been just a racer too, until circumstance had forced him to be something else. Maybe it was only fitting that she'd arrived at the same place.

The Oreo guard nodded to her as she left. As Taffyta walked down the center of the throne room to the stained glass hard candy doors, the emptiness of the place struck her hard. King Candy had livedhere. It had been his home. That thought seemed obvious, but the profundity of it made something twist emptily in her stomach at that moment. Vanellope—well, it maybe hadn't ever been as much of a home to her as Diet Cola Mountain, but at least she'd lived there. Now it was vacant, a symbol of everything _Sugar Rush _had lost—its false king, its real president. Was there something worse coming?

Taffyta shook herself. Maybe Ralph had been right about the code vault doing something to her brain.

As she stepped outside, she squinted into the dawn, the sun a huge red orb rising over the Frosty Mountains. Everything was sparkling under a fresh layer of snow. She breathed in, her lungs stinging as they filled with cold air, and shivered. Maybe winter wasn't so bad after all. It was pretty, you had to give it that.

Then, she sat down in Pink Lightning and wrapped her hands around the cold steering wheel. The seat felt stiff and creaked as she leaned back. She was shaking, just a little, but cradled in her kart, she felt better. No matter what, she had this. She had racing.

With another deep breath, Taffyta started her kart and headed towards home. Driving through the wintry landscape was like a dream. She felt like she hadn't noticed anything in the past two weeks, the way ice rimmed the tree branches and made them glint like hard candy, the delicate layer of frost on leaves that made them glitter in the light, the way the snow made everything hushed and secret feeling, and how quiet and still the winter air was. Her kart shattered that silence like a brick through a window, but as soon as she'd passed she somehow knew that the frigid air swallowed the sound right back up.

As the sun rose, it illuminated Gumball Gorge, the light glinting off the metal hatches of the gumball machines and dazzling her vision for a second. Before the upgrade, nothing like that had ever happened. The sun had only ever shined down on everything from directly above. But everything was different now, through every hour of the day, and every day of the year. Everything had changed. _She _had changed.

In that moment, behind the wheel of her kart, doing what she'd always done, she felt that one fact, deep inside her code. She had changed, and nothing was ever going to be the same.

Strawberry Fields came into view and soon she could see her house, tucked in its little hollow. Her heart pounded with mingled happiness at seeing it and fear at what she'd find—or not find—when she got there.

The garage door opened and she pulled in, parking Pink Lightning next to the Royal Racer. It hadn't moved. Duh. Of course it hadn't moved. She ran a hand over the curve of the hood, feeling her stomach clench into a tighter and tighter ball, and closed her eyes. When she opened them, the sun was starting to angle through the windows, slanting just right so that it illuminated the Royal Racer. She swallowed hard at the way it glittered in the light. If she never saw King Candy drive this kart again…

A door slammed.

Taffyta stood straight up, her heart hammering. That had been _her _door. She recognized the clatter from the one broken spring that she'd been meaning to fix but never seemed to find the time for. She dodged around the Royal Racer, opened the door to the garage, and stepped outside.

King Candy was standing outside her front door, facing her. He was taller. The same height as her, she noted distantly. She'd guessed right when he'd asked her to make sure he wasn't the shortest character in the game.

For a long, long moment, stretching to eternity in the cold morning light, she just stood there, frozen, and stared at him. Then, everything in her cracked open, and she couldn't really remember moving, just screaming and throwing her arms around him.

As he hugged her back hard, she buried her face in his shoulder and held onto him, unable to get any words out past the lump of knotted, messy emotions choking her throat. He didn't say anything either, and the two of them stood there like that for what could have been forever, as far as Taffyta cared. She'd never been so happy in her life, and she just wanted to hang onto him and convince herself of his realness and his _thereness _and the fact that she hadn't lost him_._

Eventually, reluctantly, she let go of him. He put his hands on her shoulders, holding her at arm's length and looking at her. "So," he said, "you weren't kidding about being twenty-five."

Taffyta laughed. "Yeah, that was just something I came up with to mess with you in there. Of course I wasn't kidding." She tucked her hair behind her ears and put a hand on her hip, grinning crookedly at him. "Hey, didn't you say you were like, programmed at thirty-five? I used to think that was ancient."

With a chuckle, he said, "And what, now it'sth just sort of old?"

Pursing her lips, unable to keep an irrepressible smile off her face, she said, "I wouldn't go that far. Maybe somewhere in between sort-of-old and ancient." Impulsively, she hugged him again. "I can't believe you're here," she said quietly. Her joy suddenly teetered on the edge of all the grief of the last few weeks. God, she was a mess. An emotional wreck. He was probably going to wish he was back in the code vault. _Don't cry, don't cry, _don't _cry._

It was no good. She started to cry.

King Candy wrapped his arms around her while she bawled, patting her back now and then. Finally, when she got her tears under control—who was she kidding, _sort of _under control—she said, "I'm sorry. It's…I'm…I really missed you." What else was there to say? This captured almost nothing of what she'd been feeling for the past two weeks, and yet, at the same time, it captured everything.

"I know," he said. When she let go of him, he gave her a faint smile and said, "I missed you too."

Taffyta gave a watery laugh and sniffled. He handed her a handkerchief. Her mascara was running again, but honestly, she'd ruined so many of his handkerchiefs with her tears and makeup at this point that he wouldn't expect anything less.

"Hey, Taff," he said, and she looked at him, mid-nose-blow. He clasped his hands behind his back and rocked back on his heels, looking serious, and like he didn't know exactly what to say. This man wasn't often at a loss for words, though she supposed, if it was ever going to happen, if would be after the past two weeks. Finally, he said, "Thank you. For everything you did."

She shook her head. "I couldn't do anything else."

"Well." He waved a hand. "That'sth just demonstrably not true. There were _lots _of things you could have done, and the vast majority of them didn't include getting access to the code vault, finding me in there, and fixing me. Not to mention acquiring a black market part to do it." He fixed her with a look and raised an eyebrow. "Which, by the way, don't get me wrong, I'm obviously very appreciative of what you did for me, but don't agree to go on a date with a scummy virus for my sake ever again, all right?"

With a shrug, she said, "Well, that's kind of gonna depend on what catastrophe I have to save you from next, so no promises."

He shook his head, but he was smiling. "Listen, you know what a high opinion I have of mysthelf, but I'm really not worth it."

Taffyta crossed her arms over her chest. "You are to me. I would've thought you'd be used that that idea by now."

"Mmph. Well." He looked away. "You know."

Yeah, she _did_ know. She knew that he'd always struggled with the idea of anyone else caring about him for _him._ That ego, arrogance, and loneliness had gotten in the way. She knew that she was the person he'd never expected to care about, and that the depth of her feelings for him had surprised him from the beginning. Honestly, she'd always half suspected that at first, when _Sugar Rush _had been plugged in, he'd thought she was annoying. Everyone else had told her the way she hero-worshipped him was obnoxious, no reason he wouldn't have thought it too. _Why are you such a suck-up, Taffyta? _all the other racers had asked her. Okay, so maybe she _had _been a suck-up—but it was only because she'd looked up to him so much, because she'd wanted him to notice her, wanted to be as good as him, wanted him to _like _her.

It turned out they were a lot alike—in a lot of ways that were bad but a lot of ways that were good, too. And for as much as she wanted to be like him, she'd had plenty to teach him, too—about the value of letting someone in, and of not having to stand alone for every single minute of your life.

But all of that was too much to say, and anyway, there didn't seem to be much point in saying something both of them already knew. Even if he hadn't read her mind and she hadn't read his, their code had been tied together in the code vault. Taffyta could still feel that connection, imprinted on her, and doubted it would ever go away. Maybe, in some way that she couldn't describe or explain, it had always been there.

She smiled at him and put her shoulders back, feeling tension and grief and every single worry of the past two weeks roll off her. The sun was coming up and the snow was sparkling. The bite in the air was crisp and cold, but there was something under it, a hint of green and warmth that said spring was coming. Taffyta pointed with a thumb over her shoulder towards the garage and said, "So, want to check out the new tracks? That is, if you don't mind me kicking your butt on all of them."

"Hoohoohoo! My dear, I'd be delighted." He returned her smile with a grin. "Though I hope you won't be too disappointed coming in second."

She stuck her tongue out and he laughed again. Okay, so yeah, everything was different. But maybe some things would never change.

* * *

Tune in next time! "The Rest of Forever" follows this fic. Thanks for reading everyone! :)

This fic also comes with a playlist:

1\. "Here's to Never Growing Up" - Avril Lavigne

2\. "Lasts, or Eschaton" - Charlotte Church

3\. "The Last Dancer" - iamamiwhoami

4\. "Wait It Out" - Imogen Heap

5\. "How" - Katherine Mcphee

6\. "Faith" - VV Brown

7\. "Rescue" - Lauren Daigle

8\. "Draft Moon" - Borealis

9\. "Get It" - Kyla La Grange

10\. "Where the Fence is Low" - LIGHTS

11\. "My True Name" - Bloc Party

12\. "Awake" - Tycho


End file.
